In my own (British English) oral tradition, nursery rhymes have played a large part. The rhymes which most English people recognise as part of their culture have been around a long time. Many of them date back to the 1600s and some are even older. Most of these rhymes were not actually meant for children at all, apart from the counting and alphabet ones. They are thought to be pieces of ballads, proverbs, street chants or tavern songs. Some relate to cusoms or rituals. A few, like Old King Cole, actually realte to real people or historical events. The name 'nursery rhymes' originated in 1824 in a Scottish magazine called 'Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine'. There is said to be 8 categories of rhymes: lullabies;(Rock-a-bye baby ) singing games (London Bridge is falling down) nonsense (Hey Diddle Diddle) riddles (Humpty Dumpty) counting (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe) tongue twisters (Peter Piper), verse stories (Queen of Hearts) and cumulative (House That Jack Built). Source for this information comes from "World Book Encyclopedia" (vol. 13. pages 620-621).