Beatrix Potter loved the countryside and she spent much of her otherwise conventional Victorian childhood drawing and studying animals. Her passion for the natural world lay behind the creation of her famous series of little books. A particular source of inspiration was the English Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and land conservationist, working with the National Trust.

  Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes, published in 1922, is a sequel to Beatrix Potter’s first rhyme collection Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes. Like the previous book it contains material she had produced and collected over a period of many years. The Cecily Parsley sequence of illustrations, for example, were first made into a little booklet twenty-five years earlier in 1897.

  www.peterrabbit.com

  FOR

  LITTLE PETER

  IN

  NEW ZEALAND

  Cecily Parsley

  lived in a pen,

  And brewed good ale

  for gentlemen;

  Gentlemen

  came every day,

  Till Cecily Parsley

  ran away.

  Goosey, goosey, gander,

  Whither will you wander?

  Upstairs and downstairs,

  And in my lady’s chamber!

  This pig went to market;

  This pig stayed at home;

  This pig had a bit of meat;

  And this pig had none;

  This little pig cried

  Wee! wee! wee!

  I can’t find my way home.

  Pussy-cat sits by the fire;

  How should she be fair?

  In walks the little dog,

  Says “Pussy! are you there?”

  “How do you do, Mistress Pussy?

  Mistress Pussy, how do you do?”

  “I thank you kindly, little dog,

  I fare as well as you!”

  Three blind mice, three blind mice,

  See how they run!

  They all run after the farmer’s wife,

  And she cut off their tails

  with a carving knife,

  Did ever you see such a thing

  in your life

  As three blind mice!

  B ow, wow, wow!

  Whose dog art thou?

  “I’m little Tom Tinker’s dog,

  Bow, wow, wow!”

  We have a little garden,

  A garden of our own,

  And every day we water there

  The seeds that we have sown.

  We love our little garden,

  And tend it with such care,

  You will not find a faded leaf

  Or blighted blossom there.

  Ninny Nanny Netticoat,

  In a white petticoat,

  With a red nose —

  The longer she stands,

  The shorter she grows.

  The End

  FREDERICK WARNE

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England

  Website: www.peterrabbit.com

  First published by Frederick Warne 1922

  This electronic edition first published 2010

  New reproductions copyright ©Frederick Warne & Co., 2002

  Original copyright in text and illustrations ©Frederick Warne & Co., 1922

  Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations.

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-72-326582-5

 


 

  Beatrix Potter, Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes

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