Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross facts for kids
Quick facts for kids "Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross" |
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The statue of the "fine lady" at Banbury Cross
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| Nursery rhyme | |
| Published | 1784 |
"Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross" is an English language nursery rhyme connected with the English town Banbury in Oxfordshire. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 21143.
Lyrics
Common modern versions include:
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
Alternative version:
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To buy little Johnny a galloping horse;
It trots behind and it ambles before,
And Johnny shall ride till he can ride no more.
Origins
The modern rhyme is the best known of a number of verses beginning with the line "Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross", some of which are recorded earlier. These include a verse printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744), with the lyrics:
Ride a cock-horse
To Banbury Cross,
To see what Tommy can buy;
A penny white loaf,
A penny white cake,
And a two-penny apple-pie.
A reference in 1725 to 'Now on Cock-horse does he ride' may allude to this or the more famous rhyme, and is the earliest indication we have that they existed. The earliest surviving version of the modern rhyme in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus, printed in London in 1784, differs significantly from modern versions in that the subject is not a fine lady but "an old woman". The version printed in Tommy Thumb's Song Book in America in 1788, which may have been in the original (c. 1744) edition, has the "fine lady", but the next extant version, in The Tom Tit's Song Book (printed in London around 1790), had:
A ring on her finger,
A bonnet of straw,
The strangest old woman
That ever you saw.
