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Namby Pamby (1725):
“Little Jack Horner”
by Henry Carey

Namby Pamby

Title: “Little Jack Horner”

Medium: nursery rhyme

Publication date: 1725

Publisher: unknown
Written by: Henry Carey

Roud Folk Song Index Number: 13027


1 characters in this story:

Character
(Click links for info about character
and his/her religious practice, affiliation, etc.)
Religious
Affiliation
Team(s)
[Notes]
Pub. #
app.
Little Jack Horner Little Jack Horner
(lead character)
lead character
  [ate a Christmas pie] MGM 28

Namby Pamby is also known as: Namby Pamby: or, a panegyrick on the new versification address'd to A----- P----. In the complete printed title of Namby Pamby, "A----- P----" refers to Ambrose Philips, the poet and politician who Carey satirizes in the ballad.

Namby Pamby is a ballad (a lengthy narrative poem) published as a broadside, written by Henry Carey which was published in London in 1725. The ballad contains the earliest known printed version of the nursery rhyme "Little Jack Horner." The nursery rhyme was almost certainly in circulation before then.

The 1725 version of "Little Jack Horner," as published in Namby Pamby reads as follows (with italics as arranged by Carey himself):

Now he sings of Jacky Horner
Sitting in the Chimney-corner
Eating of a Christmas pie,
Putting in his thumb, Oh Fie
Putting in, Oh Fie! his Thumb
Pulling out, Oh Strange! a Plum.