Hilda Boswell's Little Boy Blue Nursery Rhymes (no pub. date, Collins, illus. Hilda Boswell)

Hilda Boswell's Little Boy Blue Nursery Rhymes
Illustrated by Hilda Boswell
Published by Collins
No publication date. No ISBN.

I was very happy to find this vintage collection of nursery rhymes at an op shop a few weeks ago to add to my Hilda Boswell collection.

The book contains no publication date, just noting Collins London and Glasgow on the title page and "Printed and made in Great Britain by William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. London and Glasgow" on the back free endpaper. Internet listings seem to place it as circa 1960-1964 and it appears to have been later republished (circa 1970) by Peter Haddock publishers.

The little boy blue on the cover is not the same as the little boy blue of the rhyme inside the collection – he is wearing similar clothes (same hat, shoes, tunic shape) but his tunic has a different collar and cuffs, the boys blow different horns, and they have different facial features and hair colour. The cover picture is signed by Boswell in the bottom right hand corner as "H. Boswell". The back cover shows a well-dressed girl bouncing a younger boy on her knee – at the foot of her chair is a yellow doll and a copy of this very book (a gimmick also used on the title page of Nursery Rhyme-Land). The cover of my edition appears to be white, but I can see faint patches of (faded) pink in places, and when I compare it with images online, it appears it was meant to be pink all over!

Photo credit: The Children's Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye

The endpapers are a lovely double spread of Hilda Boswell's nursery rhyme characters from inside the book. I love the little details, like the lion eating plum cake, the children dressed in rabbit skins in the corner, the man in the moon smiling at the cow that flies past him as he holds out a hand to the old woman with a broom, and the little fairy eating an orange that has fallen from the basket of the girl from 'Oranges and Lemons'. It's a spread full of delight and good cheer. 

Endpapers of Hilda Boswell's Little Boy Blue Nursery Rhymes

The free endpaper at the front of the book features a cat and its fiddle, with a cloud-covered crescent moon in the background, although it's a quite different character from the cat with fiddle featured in the endpapers above and the 'Hey, Diddle, Diddle' nursery rhyme doesn't actually appear in this collection – the fiddling cat in the above endpapers is the same fiddling cat that appears on the cover and in the illustrated rhyme in the collection Hey Diddle Diddle, but the one on the free endpaper appears to be a fresh image altogether.

Cat and fiddle, from the front free endpaper

The title page shows a little girl in a blue dress with a black buckle, standing with her teddy bear in a field of flowers alongside a field of wheat, with a cow and sheep in the background, birds and a butterfly above, and a fairy in a flower in the foreground.

Fairy and child, from the title page

The collection features 49 nursery rhymes, across 55 pages. There is no contents page or index of first lines, so I've compiled one below (see end of post).

All the rhymes in this collection are published in identical form in Hilda Boswell's Nursery Rhyme Treasury. As Boswell's big treasuries are compiled into her Omnibus, the full set of rhymes appear there as well, and a selection of the works from the Omnibus appears in her small coloured treasuries. Some of the rhymes in this collection also appear in identical form in Nursery Rhyme-Land; Hey, Diddle, Diddle! Nursery Rhymes; and other collections. So if you can't get your hands on this Little Boy Blue collection, the good news is that its typographical arrangements can be enjoyed in many other places. For a full list of Hilda Boswell's nursery rhyme collections, and links to my reviews of her other works, see Hilda Boswell's Nursery Rhyme Collections.

I really enjoyed the rhymes and illustrations in this collection. It begins with its title nursery rhyme, 'Little Boy Blue'. Unlike many illustrations for that nursery rhyme, Little Boy Blue is pictured awake and blowing his horn (rather than asleep under the haystack). The first double page spread is for 'The Lion and the Unicorn', which features a medieval town, with the local 'Ye Bakery' busily sending out people with bread and cake while a soldier carrying short sword and polearm comes running. I particularly liked the baker ready to attack with two breadsticks and the child offering plum cake.

Detail from 'The Lion and the Unicorn'

The illustrations throughout the collection place the rhymes in a variety of historical periods – sometimes even many at once, as in 'Three Young Rats'. I can't place the historical era of the black felt hats worn with black (red-lined) capes or cloaks and white jabots (if anyone can help, please comment below!), but they are certainly different from the straw boater hats and blue coats of late 19th and early 20th century England, the modern (1960s) dog racing jackets, the 18th century wigs and satin vests, and the demi-veils (which could be 19th century or a mid-20th century revival, although with cat-specific adornments!). I liked the bottom panel of the entire group hurrying home in the rain (not an addition you often see).

Text and illustrations for 'Three Young Rats'

As in many of Hilda Boswell's illustrations, there are flower fairies throughout the collection, up to hi-jinks (e.g. stealing eggs from the birds in 'There Was an Old Man with a Beard', looking for and catching coins in 'Oranges and Lemons') and often mimicking the action of the main characters in the nursery rhymes – I particularly enjoyed their mimicry of the fighting cats in 'Two Little Kittens'.

Detail from 'Two Little Kittens'

I enjoyed many other aspects of the collection, but to draw this review to a close I'll just draw attention to 'Cock Robin' and 'Lavender's Blue'. In 'Cock Robin', the "Bull" (usually drawn by illustrators as a bullfinch) is a bovine with a ring in his nose.

Detail from 'Cock Robin'

'Lavender's Blue' is an interesting variant of the basic one verse nursery rhyme often presented in collections. We more often see "dilly dilly" than "diddle diddle" for this rhyme, but apparently "diddle diddle" is the original from the late 1600s, while "dilly dilly" came much later. I liked the additional rural verses of this variant, the more common first verse accompanied by an illustration of a boy in a farmer's smock walking with a girl carrying a basket of lavender, and the additional two verses illustrated with agricultural labourers at work, including a boy with a birdscarer (clacker/clapper). There is a sweet fantasy addition of fairies (including fairy royalty) bringing the boy and girl crowns. 

Text and illustrations for 'Lavender's Blue'

There appear to be a few copies of Nursery Rhyme-Land for sale online, but as noted above, all the rhymes appear in identical form in Hilda Boswell's Nursery Rhyme Treasury. The same is true of some of the rhymes, as indicated below, which appear in identical form in Nursery Rhyme-Land [NRL] and Hey, Diddle, Diddle! Nursery Rhymes [HDD]. 

Hilda Boswell's Little Boy Blue Nursery Rhymes – Contents

• Little Boy Blue [NRL] [HDD]
• Hoddley, Poddley
• The Lion and the Unicorn
• Three Young Rats
• Hickety, Pickety, My Black Hen
• The Swing [HDD]
• If All the World Were Apple-Pie
• There Was an Old Man with a Beard
• When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land
• Come Let's to Bed
• Oranges and Lemons
• Molly my sister, and I, fell out [HDD]
• The Man in the Moon
• A Farmer went trotting
• I'll sing you a song
• Rock-a-bye, Baby [thy cradle is green]
• Little Tommy Tittlemouse
• Dame Trot
• There Was an Old Woman [tossed up in a basket]
• I Love Little Pussy
• Multiplication is Vexation
• What are Little Girls Made of?
• Early to Bed
• Doctor Foster
• Diddle, diddle, Dumpling
• Monday's Child
• Some Mice Went Into a Barn to Spin
• A Robin and a Robin's Son
• Mary Had a Pretty Bird [HDD]
• Hector Protector [HDD]
• Two Little Kittens
• Boys and Girls Come Out to Play
• What's the News
• There was an old man on the Border
• Lavender's Blue
• This Little Pig
• Pussy-cat sits by the fire
• Little Jenny Wren
• Tom he Was a Piper's Son
• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
• Hey Diddle Dinkety
• Baby Bunting
• I Had a Little Hen
• Little Tom Tucker [NRL]
• Georgie Porgie [NRL]
• Cock Robin
• The Old Person of Dover [HDD]
• There was a Young Lady of Bute
• Little Girl, Little Girl