Notes

Below is the original spelling of this rhyme as found in "The Nursery Rhymes of England". I modernized the spelling above.

We make no spare
Of John Hunkes' mare;
And now I
Think she will die;
He thought it good
To put her in the wood,
To seek where she might ly dry;
If the mare should chance to fale,
Then the crownes would for her sale

Comments

Halliwell (a 19th century collector of nursery rhymes) wrote: "From a MS. in the old Royal Library, in the British Museum, the exact reference to which is mislaid. It is written, if I recollect rightly, in a hand of the time of Henry VIII, in an older manuscript."

Thanks and Acknowledgements

This rhyme can be found in "The Nursery Rhymes of England" 5th edition (1886), collected by James Orchard Halliwell and illustrated by W. B. Scott.