The verses used today are the first of a longer
chapbook history first published in 1764.[1] The character of Simple Simon may have been in circulation much longer, possibly through an Elizabethan chapbook and in a
ballad, Simple Simon's Misfortunes and his Wife Margery's Cruelty, from about 1685.[1] A possible inspiration is
Simon Edy, a beggar of the St Giles area in the 18th century.[3]
Notes
^
abcI. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 333-4.
^Walter Thornbury, Edward Walford (1880), Old and New London: Westminster and the western suburbs Volume 3 of Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, Old and New London, Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, p. 207