Fleas, Flies, and Friars

Medieval children lived in a world rich in poetry, from lullabies, nursery rhymes, and songs to riddles, tongue twisters, and nonsensical verses . They read or listened to stories in verse: ballads of Robin Hood, romances, and comic tales. Poems were composed to teach them how to behave, eat at meals, hunt game, and even learn Latin and French. In Fleas, Flies, and Friars , Nicholas Orme, an expert on childhood in the Middle Ages, has gathered a wide variety of children's verse that circulated i