Margaret W. Tarrant
I never have enough space for my books and every so often undergo the painful process of culling my collection. I look at the spines along my shelves and think:
- Which books did I enjoy but will not read again?
- Which ones did I buy, haven’t read and will never read?
- Which ones have I bought, did read and wish I’d saved my money?
There are some books I ought to throw out but I can’t. I’ve got a really tatty book on nursery rhymes, for example. It is falling apart; its colour plate is missing from the hardback cover; its pages are held together by sellotape, itself brittle with age, and almost every page is freckled with rust spots. I bought it in an Oxfam shop about twenty years ago for 10p. I love it though. The rhymes in it are priceless.
I like this one:
‘Old Woman, Old woman, shall we go a -shearing?’
‘Speak a little louder sir, I am hard of hearing.’
”Old woman, old woman, shall I love you dearly?’
‘Thank you kind sir, I hear you quite clearly.’
I’m guessing they don’t use this one in playschool any more:
There was a man of Newington and he was wondrous wise,
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratch’d out both his eyes.
And when he saw his eyes were out, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
Here’s a lad who knows how to make small talk:
As Tommy Snooks and Betty Brooks
were walking out one Sunday,
Says Tommy Snooks to Betty Brooks,
‘Tomorrow will be Monday.’
The reason I handed over my hard earned cash for this book (it was in the same woeful condition 20 years ago) was for the illustrations. They’re by Margaret Tarrant (1888-1959) who trained at Guildford Art School, specializing in fairies and religious works and spent much of her life looking after her ailing parents. Her delicate watercolours are very much of their time. My book has 48 ‘colour plates’ Sadly, they do not include one of the man from Newington!
Wee Willie Winkie