Alphabe Thursday S is for Simple Simon

Simple Simon met a pieman,

Going to the fair;

Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

Let me taste your ware.

Says 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 finger very much,

Which made poor Simon whistle.

These are four verses heard in the nursery or at our mother’s knee. I can remember reciting this to my brother and thinking ‘what a silly boy.’ However, we was  for centuries recognised as the simpleton in chapbooks that circulated in Elizabethan times.  

A ballad called Simple Simon’s misfortunes and his wife Margery’s cruelty also know as Dead and alive dates back from 1685