was so given to gossiping and anecdote hunting, that the wags about
court used often to tell him idle tales, for the mischievous pleasure of
seeing him make note on them. Lord Bathurst did not, I believe, charge
Burnet with deliberate misrepresentation, but considered some of his
presumed facts _questionable_, for the reason stated.

ELIJAH WARING.


_Dance Thumbkin._--In the _Book of Nursery Rhymes_, published by the
Percy Society, there is a small error of importance, involving no less
that the learned would call "a non sequitur," and which, if my
correct-and-almost-unequalled nurse, Betty Richins, was alive, she would
have noticed much sooner that the nurseling who now addresses you. (She
died about the year 1796.) In the valuable and still popular nursery
classical song, "Dance Thumbkin, dance," it is not only an error to say
"Thumbkin _he can_ dance alone" (let any one reader of the "NOTES AND
QUERIES," male or female, _only try_), but it is not the correct text.
Betty Richins has "borne me on her knee a hundred times" and sung it
thus:--

Thumbkin _cannot_ dance alone.
So[1] dance ye merry men, every one."

I scarcely need add, that if this be true of Thumbkin, it is _truer_ of
Foreman, Longman, Middleman, and Littleman.

R.S.S.

[Footnote 1: Or _then_, meaning "for that reason."]