Tinker, Tailor

Where this rhyme comes from

Earliest record

by 1695

Sung in

UK, US, Ireland, Australia

Roud number

802

The first four trades are first found together in 1695, in a song in William Congreve's play Love for Love about "a soldier and a sailor, a tinker and a tailor". In the 1840s James Orchard Halliwell recorded a button-counting version with a different set of trades. The "rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief" line is in print by 1883, when William Wells Newell published the American version ending "doctor, lawyer, Indian chief". Children have long used it to count cherry and plum stones, buttons, daisy petals, ball bounces and skips, often to tell who they will marry.

Sources: William Congreve, Love for Love (1695); James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England (1840s); William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children (1883).

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