The Traditional Children's Games of England Scotland
& Ireland In Dictionary Form - Volume 1

With Tunes(sheet music), Singing-rhymes(lyrics), Methods Of Playing with diagrams and illustrations.

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	346                              LONDON BRIDGE human element, one as watchman, the other as prisoner. The watchman incident approaches nearer to modern facts; the prisoner incident remains unexplained by any appeal to modern life, and it occurs more frequently than the others. In only one case, the Shropshire, is the prisoner ransomed ; in the others he is sent to prison. Besides this main line of criti­cism brought out by the analysis there is little to note. The Hurstmonceux version begins with taking lambs over London Bridge, and the Shropshire version with the players themselves going over; but these are doubtless foreign adjuncts, because they do not properly prefix the main incident of the bridge being broken. The Belfast version has a curious line, uGrant said the little bee or dee," which the Cork version renders, "Gran says the little D." To these there is now no meaning that can be traced, but they help to prove that the rhyme originated from a state of things not understood by modern players. In all the versions with the prisoner incident it comes quite sud­denly, without any previous indication, except in the Kent version, which introduces the exclamation, " Here's a prisoner I have got! " As the analysis shows the prisoner incident to be a real and not accidental part of the game, and the unmeaning expressions to indicate an origin earlier than modern players can understand, we can turn to other facts to see if the origin can be in any way traced. (d) This game is universally acknowledged to be a very ancient one, but its origin is a subject of some diversity of opinion. The special feature of the rhymes is that consider­able difficulty occurs in the building of the bridge by ordinary means, but without exactly suggesting that extraordinary means are to be adopted, a prisoner is suddenly taken. The question is, What does this indicate ? Looking to the fact of the widespread superstition of the foundation sacrifice, it would seem that we may have here a tradition of this rite. So recently as 1872, there was a scare in Calcutta when the Hooghly Bridge was being constructed. The natives then got hold of the idea that Mother Ganges, indignant at being bridged, had at last consented to submit to the insult on condition that each pier of the structure was