Little Jack Horner in the Tudor period. The song’s most common lyrics are: <poem style="margin-left:24px> Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner, Eating his Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, "What a good boy am I!"</poem> It was first documented in full in the nursery rhyme collection "Mother Goose's melody, or, Sonnets for the cradle", which may date from 1765, although the earliest surviving English edition is from 1791. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his "National Nursery Rhymes and
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes Potter planned a book of nursery rhymes called "Appley Dapply", but Warne preferred her original (rather than her derivative work) and offered only modest encouragement. The project was dear to Potter's heart, and she continued to develop the concept while working on other productions for Warne. Potter planned "Appley Dapply" as a large format book with page borders and decorations in a style reminiscent of Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, and even considered publishing the book at her own expense if Warne lost what little interest he had in the project. In late 1904 she offered Warne a dummy book