Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross

The origins of a beloved nursery rhyme

This old rhyme, sang or chanted to children when just knee high, goes back centuries and is linked to the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire. Apparently Prime Minister Gladstone sang the rhyme to his children on a daily basis. The canonical version goes like this:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross

To see a fine lady upon a white horse

Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes

She shall have music wherever she goes.

Other versions swap the ‘fine lady’ for an ‘old lady.’ Some stray even further, doing away with any lady and instead ‘to buy little Johnny a galloping horse’ or introducing someone called Tommy who goes on to buy some baked goods.

For the purposes of this piece we’ll stick to the best known version involving a fine lady on a white horse. The rhyme may go back as far as the medieval period when it was…