The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children: Their Antiquity, Origin, and Wide Distribution. A Study in Folk-Lore.
London: Elliot Stock, 1888. First edition. Some rubbing to extremities. Uniform toning due to paper quality. A very good copy of this scholarly approach to the folklore and philology of children’s nonsense verse. Publisher’s olive-green cloth titled in gilt on spine. Large octavo. ix, [3], 121, [2] pp. Item #17890
The present work focuses on “counting-out” rhymes (e.g., “eeny, meeny, miney, mo” and “Miss Mary Mack”) and their development in diverse cultures all over the world. Henry Carrington Bolton (1843 – 1903) collected 877 examples, many of collected directly from children, of nonsense rhymes and their associated games. Most examples are in either English or German, but Bolton also examines rhymes in Arabic, Japanese, Armenian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Italian, and more. Bolton uses these widespread examples to trace the evolution of nonsense words throughout history, different regional interpretations of the same basic rhymes, and the importance of the rhymes in play. The present work also includes a lengthy list of titles Bolton consulted in his research.
Bolton was a chemist, historian, and esteemed bibliographer of scientific works. One of his most important bibliographies was the Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals, 1665–1882 (1885). The second edition (1897) includes the full titles of 8,603 journals in twenty languages, together with chronological tables showing the year of issue for each volume of 500 of the publications and a check list of libraries holding them. In 1893 Bolton published A Select Bibliography of Chemistry, 1492–1892, which included over twelve thousand titles in the first edition and an additional three thousand titles in a later edition (1901). His interests ranged from the history of women in medicine to divination to Chinese alchemy, which accounts for his interest in the topic of children’s play. American National Biography,
Price: $400.00