Editing Nursery rhyme (section)

{{Short description|Traditional song or poem for children}}
{{About|the traditional poems or songs for children|a Japanese [[galgame]]|Nursery Rhyme (visual novel)}}
[[File:Hey.diddle.diddle.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.3|Illustration of "[[Hey Diddle Diddle]]", a well-known nursery rhyme]]

A '''nursery rhyme''' is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term '''[[Mother Goose]] rhymes''' is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.<ref name="Oxford"/>

From the mid-16th century nursery rhymes began to be recorded in English plays, and most popular rhymes date from the 17th and 18th centuries.<ref name="Fox"/> The first English collections, ''[[Tommy Thumb's Song Book]]'' and a sequel, ''[[Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book]]'', were published by [[Mary Cooper (publisher)|Mary Cooper]] in 1744. Publisher [[John Newbery]]'s stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, ''Mother Goose's Melody, or Sonnets for the Cradle'' (London, 1780).{{refn|group=note|Previously Mother Goose meant fairy tales, with Perrault’s collection of fairy tales translated from French, "Contes de ma mere l'Oye" into English in 1729 by [[Robert Samber]] as "Tales of Mother Goose."<ref name="Oxford">{{cite news|title=Nursery Rhymes|url=http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791231/obo-9780199791231-0124.xml|agency=Oxford University Press|date=9 December 2017}}</ref><ref name="M. Prichard, 1984 p. 383">{{harvnb|Carpenter|Prichard|1984|p=383}}</ref>}}