Half of the earliest English nursery rhyme book rates £40,000 in Knightsbridge

Blackamoor, Taunymoor, Suck a Bubby; Your Father’s a Cuckold, Your Mother told me ....not the most familiar of nursery rhymes, nor indeed one likely to find much favour in the present century, but that rhyme, illustrated right, is only one of 37 found in the second volume of Tom Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, many of which are much more familiar, if not always in quite the same form as we know them now.

‘Little Tom Tucker’, ‘Bah, Bah, Black Sheep’ and ‘Who did kill Cock Robin’ are pretty much as we kno…

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