Nursery Rhymes

[Barbara]

Does anyone know if I can use nursery rhymes in my novel? Or am I treading on any copyright toes?

I had a google and can't find much.

 

[Tim James]

What I have read suggests that "traditional" nursery rhymes may be in the public domain and can thus be quoted and used as required, certainly an online solicitor on this forum thinks so.

https://forum.freeadvice.com/threads/intellectual-property-of-nursery-rhymes-translations.583386/

However, the website has lots of disclaimers about taking no responsibility for the accuracy and legality of posts to the forum so I wouldn't rely on the response to be absolutely correct.
This person is asking a question about translation of them but it still covers the same copyright issues.
But I would still be quite wary of more modern ones.
Quoting one or a few lines from one in a novel is not unusual.

 

[Barbara]

Thank you for this @Tim James. Interesting link.

I'm thinking of using some old well-known ones. But I might go the 'play safe' way and compose my own.

 

[Susan]

@Barbara, you could try searching Project Gutenberg or other public domain sites for 'nursery rhymes' or something specific - if it's there, you can use it. Here's Andrew Lang's The Nursery Rhyme Book.

 

[Leonora]

Old ones are rarely attributable, and if the author's been dead for 70 years it should be ok.

 

[Leonora]

@Barbara, you could try searching Project Gutenberg or other public domain sites for 'nursery rhymes' or something specific - if it's there, you can use it. Here's Andrew Lang's The Nursery Rhyme Book.

Project Gutenberg is fantastic.

 

[Barbara]

@Susan. Excellent. I'll check it out. Thank you so much.

 

[KG Christopher]

nursery rhymes a surely in the same vein as 'folk stories' think of hans christian andersson or the brothers grymn. they sourced their material from well layed down sources... i am pretty sure 'humpty dumpty' harks back to the english civil war...or even 'Ring a ring of rossies' is a refference to the pbubonic plague in London ??? cant see anyone giving you a hard time if you use something that old ?

 

[Quillwitch]

nursery rhymes a surely in the same vein as 'folk stories' think of hans christian andersson or the brothers grymn. they sourced their material from well layed down sources... i am pretty sure 'humpty dumpty' harks back to the english civil war...or even 'Ring a ring of rossies' is a refference to the pbubonic plague in London ??? cant see anyone giving you a hard time if you use something that old ?

Youŕe back! Awesome! Good to hear from you!

 

[RK Wallis]

yes, @Leonora is right:

In the UK, copyright in artistic works generally lasts for the lifetime of the artist plus 70 years after their death. Some exceptions apply, for instance for engravings that were unpublished at the time of the artist’s death.

 

[Dan Payne]

But you need to do some due diligence. It's easy (but rare) to be caught out by something that ought to be public domain, but which has ended up in possession of an estate. I'm thinking of "Happy Birthday" here - until 2015 it was actually under copyright, and a $14M settlement was reached that made it public domain. As a rule of thumb I would say the more well known the nursery rhyme, the more likely it is to be public domain, but a quick Google search ought to clear up any uncertainty.

 

[Barbara]

Thank you all for your input. Much appreciated.