Old Mother Hubbard & Her Wonderful Dog
August 14, 2015
Courtesy of Jemmy Catnach of Catnach Press, it is my pleasure to publish this early nineteenth century shaggy dog tale of the devoted Mother Hubbard – believed to be by Sarah Catherine Martin
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Libby Hall, Collector of Dog Photography
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Miss P approves!
I suspect that the ‘great Jocko’ might refer to this: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Jacco_Macacco. The date is certainly right and while the spelling differs, I can find no contemporary dog of this name.
Hey, I knew the first couplet of each verse, apart from the last, due to being fairly old and having been well educated in Nursery Rhymes. Thanks for the whole verses!
Wonderful: I’d never seen a coloured version before. There are a couple of books about the Catnachs (which you probably know!) by Charles Hindley, the bibliographer of ephemeral publishing: http://bit.ly/1PbH5db and http://bit.ly/1PoMjTL
I thought I recognised this from a book, A Nursery Companion by Iona and Peter Opie, that I bought my children 2o odd years ago. However, when I found it, it contains a later reproduction and the last two lines of each verse are missing. It was interesting to read them. The introduction contains some history of the author, Sarah Catherine Martin, a spinster who was staying at the home of an MP. He tired of her constant chatter and encouraged her to find some way of entertaining herself on her own. Mother Hubbard was the result.