Part of the rim of a nursery rhyme cup, depicting the popular rhyme ‘This is the House that Jack Built’. These cups typically depicted two verses at a time, with an image on each side. Each cup was a different colour (e.g. brown, blue, green, red). A [full set might have comprised half a dozen. This example has the remains of the verses:
‘This is the House that Jack Built’
‘This is the Man All Tattered and Torn
[That Kissed the Maiden All Forlorn’]
On the other side there would have been an image of the maiden (who milked the cow with the crumpled horn). By bringing the different mugs together children could work out the sequence of the rhyme. Normally, however, they would have learnt it by heart anyway.