A Is for Apple Pie

DESCRIPTION: Alphabet song, beginning "A is/stands for apple pie, B baked/bit it" and perhaps ending "And don't you wish you had a piece of apple pie?"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1671 (Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds & Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy, according to the Opies)
KEYWORDS: food nonballad wordplay
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Randolph 874, "A Is for Apple Pie" (3 texts plus an excerpt, but the "D" text is "The Average Boy")
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 1, "A was an apple-pie" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #611, pp. 240-241, "(A was an apple-pie)"
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, pp. 17-18, "A Was an Apple Pie" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: James Orchard Halliwell, editor, _The Nursery Rhymes of England: Collected Chiefly from Oral Tradition_, James Russell Smith, 1844, page 14, item XXXIII, "(A was an apple-pie)" (1 text) (available on Google Books)
[E. Lumley], _Nursery Rhymes, Tales, and Jingles_, James Burns, 1844, p. 45, #57, "(A was an apple-pie)" (1 text) (available on Google Books)
Heath Readers Series, _First Reader_, Heath and Company, 1903, pp. 45-46, "(A stands for apple pie)" (1 text) (available on Google Books)
Kate Greenaway, _A Apple Pie_, The Saalfield Publishing Co., 1907, "(A Apple Pie" (1 illustrated text, which occupies the whole booklet) (available on Google Books)
Roud #7539
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Logger's Alphabet" (subject) and references there
NOTES [77 words]: The first six lines of this piece appear in John Eachard's 1671 pamphlet "Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds & Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy."
It first appears as an educational tool in Mary Cooper's 1743 spelling book, "The Child's New Play-thing," and was common in nineteenth century texts (often under the title, "The Tragical Death of an Apple Pie" or similar). The ADDITIONAL entries show some of these versions- RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: R874

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