Alphabe Thursday … F is for Doctor Foster

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester

In a shower of rain:

He stepped in a puddle,

Right up to his middle,

And never went there again.

Although making a regular appearance in recent nursery-rhyme books, Doctor Foster has little traceable history and was first printed by James Orchard Halliwell in The nursery rhymes of England in 1844.  The rhyming of middle and puddle, however points to the old form of the word piddle having been used originally.  Boyd Smith (1920) suggests that the rhyme describes the incident in the travels of Edward I, whose horse, the story goes, once stuck so deep in the mud of a Gloucester street that planks of wood had to placed on the ground before the creature could regain its footing.  Edward is said to have refused to go there ever again.  A rhyme in Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1810) tells a different story.

Old Doctor Foster went to Gloster,

To preach the word of God.

When he came there, he sat in his chair,

And gave all the people the nod.