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A Apple-Pie and Other Nursery Tales (ca. 1870s) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read a digitized version of A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales. It was a lovely little story book, undated, probably from the 1870s. This book was originally published by George Routledge and Sons. It has 48 beautiful illustrations. (1) I recommend looking at them as time permits.
The book consists of six chapters. The first one, of course, is A Apple Pie. This is a cute alphabet learning story consisting of “The History of An Apple Pie”.
Our second entry is The Cat’s Tea Party, a story about, you guessed it, a tea party attended by cats! This one is all over the place. One can easily imagine a little child coming up with the details of this one on the spot. 😂
The third is This Little Pig Went to Market. This is the version that ends in “wee wee wee all the way home”.
The fourth is named Nursery Rhymes II. It is named the second, because there was another book published before this one called The Robin Redbreast Picture Book, in which is the first nursery rhyme installment.
In our volume that we are speaking of today, the nursery rhymes that have been included are ‘Banbury Cross’, ‘Victuals and Drink’, ‘A Fox Jumped Up’, ‘Ding Dong Bell’ (which has a strange variation I’d not heard before – ‘Who got her out? Dog with long snout’), ‘Old Woman Tossed Up In A Basket’, ‘Old Mother Hubbard’, ‘Dapple Grey’, and ‘Pussy Sits Beside the Fire’. A couple of these I actually had not heard before, so that was fun.
The fifth is the story of The Three Bears. This version is notable, because instead of naming the girl Goldilocks, her name is Silver-Locks. They also do not call the bears’ food ‘porridge’, it is simply described as jars of ‘soup’. The bears’ names are Mr. Bruin, Mammy Muff, and Tiny. Silver-Locks enjoys Tiny’s food the most, so she eats that up. While eating, she sits in Tiny’s chair and gets to rocking it so dangerously that she falls out and breaks the chair. She isn’t the least bit upset, because it was fun! Then she goes up to Tiny’s bed and sleeps there until the bears come and she’s so scared that she jumps out the window and runs home.
Our last story is Little Red Riding Hood. In this version, Red meets the wolf on the road and they agree that he will go one way she will go to the other and they will see who gets there faster. Unfortunately, the wolf gets there first and eats the grandma. And then when Little Red gets there he eats her too. The end.
I love to read and hear fairy tales, even if I’ve heard them before. Sometimes there are different variations or details on a story that I haven’t heard, which was the case in this book.
Five stars! Gorgeous book.
