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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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The House that Jack built
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Nursery rhyme in which each verse adds one more of the events leading up to the cat killing the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. First printed in the mid-18C, it is certainly much older – if only because the Roman Catholic priest, 'all shaven and shorn', must predate the Reformation. An ancient Aramaic rhyme, Had Gadyo, has been suggested as the origin; but it is as likely to be a parallel case, for stories on this pattern exist in several languages.
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A.E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman, 1859–1936) Distinguished classical scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, who regarded the fame resulting from A *Shropshire Lad as almost an unwelcome distraction.
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