| "Simple Simon" | |
|---|---|
 William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Simple Simon, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose | |
| Nursery rhyme | |
| Published | 1764 |
| Songwriter(s) | Traditional |
"Simple Simon" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19777.
Lyrics
The rhyme is as follows;
- Simple Simon met a pieman,
- Going to the fair;
- Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
- Let me taste your ware.
- Said the pieman to Simple Simon,
- Show me first your penny;
- Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
- Indeed I have not any.
- Simple Simon went a-fishing,
- For to catch a whale;
- All the water he had got,
- Was in his mother's pail.
- Simple Simon went to look
- If plums grew on a thistle;
- He pricked his fingers very much,
- Which made poor Simon whistle.
- He went for water in a sieve
- But soon it all fell through
- And now poor Simple Simon
- Bids you all adieu!
Origin
The verses used today are the first of a longer chapbook history first published in 1764. The character of Simple Simon may have been in circulation much longer, possibly through an Elizabethan chapbook and in a ballad, Simple Simon's Misfortunes and his Wife Margery's Cruelty, from about 1685. A possible inspiration is Simon Edy, a beggar of the St Giles area in the 18th century.
Notes
- ^ I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 333-4.
- Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Simple Simon | Nursery Rhymes And Kids Songs by KidsCamp. YouTube.
- Walter Thornbury, Edward Walford (1880), Old and New London: Westminster and the western suburbs Volume 3 of Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, Old and New London, Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, p. 207