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
Nursery rhyme antiquities (historical), fireside stories, game-rhymes, alphabet-rhymes, riddles, nature-rhymes, places and families, proverbs, superstitions, customs, and nursery songs (lullabies). By the time of Sabine Baring-Gould's "A Book of Nursery Songs" (1895), folklore was an academic study, full of comments and footnotes. A professional anthropologist, Andrew Lang (1844–1912) produced "The Nursery Rhyme Book" in 1897. The early years of the 20th century are notable for the illustrations to children's books including Caldecott's "Hey Diddle Diddle Picture Book" (1909) and Arthur Rackham's "Mother Goose" (1913). The definitive study of English rhymes remains the work of Iona and Peter Opie. Many nursery rhymes have