Little Polly Flinders

DESCRIPTION: "Little Polly Flinders, Sat among the cinders, Warming her pretty little toes. Her mother came and caught her, And whipped her little daughter For spoiling her nice new clothes."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1807 (Original Ditties for the Nursery, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: clothes
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 119, "Little Polly Flinders" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 421, "Little Polly Flinders" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #166, p. 125, "(Little Jenny Flinders)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 113, "Little Polly Flinders" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 80, "Little Polly Flinders" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Iona Opie, _Ditties for the Nursery_, Oxford University Press, 1954, 1959 (new edition of "Original Ditties for the Nursery," c. 1805), p. 71, "Jenny Flinders" (1 text)

Roud #19767
NOTES [122 words]: The improbable Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, pp. 152-153, believes that Little Polly Flinders is Amy Robsart, the wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favorite of Elizabeth I, who was murdered, though she can't decide who did the murdering. As with most Thomas hypotheses, I can see no evidence whatsoever for this supposition. Not even for the fact that Robsart was murdered; she fell downstairs, but it's not absolutely certain that she was pushed rather than falling; the coroner's jury ruled it an accidental death (see John A. Wagner, Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World, Britain, Ireland, Europe, and America, Onyx Press, 1999, p. 90). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: OO2421

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