Queen Anne

DESCRIPTION: "Queen Anne, Queen Anne, you sit in the sun, As fair as a lily, as white as a wand, I send you three letters, and pray read one, You must read one, if you can't read all, So pray, Miss or Master, throw up the ball."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1900 (Halliwell, according to Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose)
KEYWORDS: playparty royalty nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose (note to) #187, p. 134 ("Queen Anne, Queen Anne, you sit in the sun")
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #98, "My Lady Queen Anne" (1 text)
Roud #12755
NOTES [84 words]: This is connected by folklore to Anne of Great Britain (1665-1714; reigned 1702-1714), who is reported to have enjoyed sitting in the sun in gardens. But it can't have been an eyewitness account, since Anne was hardly fair of face and not particularly fair of hue.
To be sure, Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, p. 309, instead of "as white as a wand," gives the fourth line as "as brown as a bun." But that's not really accurate either. RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: BGMG186N

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