Simple Simon (nursery rhyme)

This article is about the nursery rhyme. For other uses, see Simple Simon (disambiguation).

"Simple Simon" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19777.

"Simple Simon"
William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Simple Simon, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose
Nursery rhyme
Published	1764
Songwriter(s)	Traditional

Lyrics

Denslow illustration of Simple Simon and the pie man

The rhyme is as follows;

Simple Simon met a pieman,

Going to the fair;

Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

Let me taste your ware.

Said the pieman to Simple Simon,

Show me first your penny;

Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

Indeed I have not any.

Simple Simon went a-fishing,

For to catch a whale;

All the water he had got,

Was in his mother's pail.

Simple Simon went to look

If plums grew on a thistle;

He pricked his fingers very much,

Which made poor Simon whistle.^[1]

He went for water in a sieve

But soon it all fell through

And now poor Simple Simon

Bids you all adieu!^[2]

Origin

The verses used today are the first of a longer chapbook history first published in 1764.^[1] The character of Simple Simon may have been in circulation much longer, possibly through an Elizabethan chapbook and in a ballad, Simple Simon's Misfortunes and his Wife Margery's Cruelty, from about 1685.^[1] A possible inspiration is Simon Edy, a beggar of the St Giles area in the 18th century.^[3]

Notes

1. I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 333-4.
2. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Simple Simon | Nursery Rhymes And Kids Songs by KidsCamp. YouTube.
3. Walter Thornbury, Edward Walford (1880), Old and New London: Westminster and the western suburbs Volume 3 of Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, Old and New London, Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, p. 207

External links

• A page containing the full text of the rhyme