This Is the Way the Ladies Ride

DESCRIPTION: "This is the way the ladies ride, Nimble, nimble, nimble, nimble. This is the way the gentlemen ride, A gallop a trot... This is the way the farmers ride, Joggety jog... And when they come to a slippery place, Tumble-down Dick!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1842 (Halliwell)
KEYWORDS: horse | riding ladies gentlemen
FOUND IN: Ireland US
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 290, "This is the way the ladies ride" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #566, p. 230, "(This is the way the ladies ride)"
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, pp, 92-93, "How Folks Ride" (1 text)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 31, "This is the way the baby rides" (1 text)
Roud #19901
RECORDINGS:
Judy Cook, "This Is the Way the Ladies Ride" (Piotr-Archive #273, recorded 09/27/2022)
Robert Ridley-Shackleton, "Nim Nim" (fragments; Piotr-Archive #494, recorded 02/15/2023)
NOTES [89 words]: The Baring-Goulds say this was played while jumping with crossed legs. But Delamar considers it a join-in rhyme -- a word game more than an action game. Alice Kane said she sang it while sitting on an adult relative's shoe! Robert Ridley-Shackleton's "Nim Nim" is played while dandling a baby on the knee. I suspect this is a different song, but Ridley-Shackleton's version is just a collection of fragments, without the full order and probably without a single complete verse, so I file it here because it is probably the same idea. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: OO20290

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