Nursery Rhyme. XI. Historical

    High diddle ding,
    Did you hear the bells ring?
    The parliament soldiers are gone to the king!
    Some they did laugh, some they did cry,
    To see the parliament soldiers pass by.

        [From MS. Sloane, 1489, fol. 19, written in the time of Charles I.]

    The king of France, and four thousand men,
    They drew their swords, and put them up again.

    Good Queen Bess was a glorious dame,
    When bonny King Jemmy from Scotland came;
    We'll pepper their bodies,
    Their peaceable noddies,
    And give them a crack of the crown!

        [The following is partly quoted in an old song in a MS. at Oxford, Ashmole, No. 36, fol. 113.]

    As I was going by Charing Cross,
    I saw a black man upon a black horse;
    They told me it was King Charles the First;
    Oh dear! my heart was ready to burst!

        [Taken from MS. Douce, 357, fol. 124. See Echard's 'History of England,' book iii, chap. 1.]

    See saw, sack-a-day;
    Monmouth is a pretie boy,
        Richmond is another,
    Grafton is my onely joy,
    And why should I these three destroy,
        To please a pious brother!

        [Another version. The nurse sings the first line, and repeats it, time after time, until the expectant little one asks, what next? Then comes the climax.]

    The king of France, the king of France, with forty thousand men,
    Oh, they all went up the hill, and so - came back again!