I was going down a nursery rhyme rabbit hole, looking up the origins of "There Was a Crooked Man" and other classic English rhymes, and the Opies kept getting cited as the authority.
Iona and Peter Opie published The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes in 1951, with a revised edition in 1997. It covers over 500 rhymes with historical context and folk origins. The Opies spent decades collecting and documenting children's folklore and are considered the foremost scholars of English nursery rhymes. Their work traces many rhymes back to political satire, street cries, and medieval songs that had nothing to do with children originally.
I was going down a nursery rhyme rabbit hole, looking up the origins of "There Was a Crooked Man" and other classic English rhymes, and the Opies kept getting cited as the authority.
Iona and Peter Opie published The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes in 1951, with a revised edition in 1997. It covers over 500 rhymes with historical context and folk origins. The Opies spent decades collecting and documenting children's folklore and are considered the foremost scholars of English nursery rhymes. Their work traces many rhymes back to political satire, street cries, and medieval songs that had nothing to do with children originally.