Simple Simon (nursery rhyme)

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox song "Simple Simon" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19777.

Text

File:Simple Simon 2 - WW Denslow - Project Gutenberg etext 18546.jpg

Denslow illustration of Simple Simon and the pie man

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,

Sir I haven't 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.<ref name=Opie1997>I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 333-4.</ref>

He went for water in a sieve

But soon it all fell through

And now poor Simple Simon

Bids you all adieu!<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: Template:Cite AV mediaTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

Origin

The verses used today are the first of a longer chapbook history first published in 1764.<ref name=Opie1997/> 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.<ref name=Opie1997/> A possible inspiration is Simon Edy, a beggar of the St Giles area in the 18th century.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

External links

• A page containing the full text of the rhyme