Originally from England but living in Germany for the past 23 years, Alex Spencer has been teaching English, primarily in the lower and middle school of the Freie Waldorfschule Kreuzberg for over a decade. She is mother of 4 and an active member of the singer-songwriter community in Berlin. Her most recent musical project has been arranging and recording 100 nursery rhymes as a teaching aid for English teachers.

Email: alexspencermusic@gmail.com

Photo credit Susanne Stoesssel

 

A woman I know once said through learning nursery rhymes, she felt that she had English ancestors she never actually had. She comes from South-Africa, has Indian ancestry and German parentage but grew up in England. I intend no value judgement here, whether it is better or worse to feel English/British as opposed to any other nationality or cultural identity and I acknowledge that the cultural heritage of the United Kingdom is problematic in terms of its colonial hegemony over many countries of the world in the past. However, what is expressed in this statement gets to the crux of what I would like to claim in this article: nursery rhymes carry within them something so essential to the English/British culture and language, that to be steeped in them is to feel that language and that culture in one's very bones.

Waldorf foreign language teaching in the lower school is all about the bones! We bring the language to the children in such a way that it goes straight into the body, without having to get past the Beefeaters of the mind first. We move and play and sing and dance in the language. We don't stop to ask what we're saying or why. We speak for the joy of speaking, for the sake of hearing the melody of the words, for experiencing the rhythm of the syntax. Many nursery rhymes do not make logical sense, so they are well placed in the lower school where they do not have to answer to such rational scrutiny. Nevertheless, the words being spoken do carry meaning, which can be conveyed through voice and gesture. In fact, many of the rhymes tell of historical events or describe everyday occurrences from bygone times. Nursery rhymes are as full of washer-women, farmers, pigs and hens as they are kings, queens, dukes and duchesses. We come across landmarks of London but also bump into young rascals with pigs under their arms running away from furious masters down country lanes [i]. Culinary delights such as hot-cross buns [ii], plumb puddings and all manner of pies can be tasted. And all simply through participating in nursery rhymes.

It is my assertion that nursery rhymes carry what might be termed the spirit of the English language within them. Very ancient counting rhymes like:

Inter, mitzy, titzy tool

Ira, dira, dominu

Oder, poker, dominoker

Out goes you.

have the onomatopoeic speech-sounds which, though not bearing obvious meaning, carry something essentially English sounding about them. As if children were making up words to make it sound as if they were speaking English.

 

What are nursery rhymes?

“In Britain and America, and wherever the English word is spoken, the children become joyful and wise listening to the same traditional verses” (I. & P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, p.1).

According to Iona and Peter Opie – the undisputed experts on nursery rhymes – the first record of a song book for children in the English language was Tom Thumb's Pretty Song Book, which was printed in 1744. The term nursery rhyme first appeared in the early nineteenth century however, when a collection of children's ‘songs and ditties’ were put into a book by Ann and Jane Taylor called Rhymes for the Nursery (1806).

The nineteenth century was a time of great social and economic change in Britain. With the industrial revolution, the middle class started to emerge and attitudes towards children and childhood began to shift. In the working class, where a population explosion was underway, children were expected to earn their keep by working back-breaking and bone-rattling jobs going up chimneys, down coal mines, labouring in factories and in the houses of the rich. Middle and upper class children, on the other hand, were cosseted and closeted away from such harsh realities. They were placed in the care of women, dubbed ‘nurses’, in rooms dubbed ‘nurseries’ and expected to remain there. The nurses' challenging task was to keep these little ones entertained and quiet until such a time as they were called for, perhaps at dinner time, to then be ‘seen and not heard’ around the adults of the house.

Resourcefully, these women drew from what they knew and what they brought with them from their own lives and backgrounds: the songs, riddles and rhymes which they themselves were familiar with from growing up in the fields or the mills, in the ale-houses or farm yards of Great Britain. So many nursery rhymes have themes one would not immediately associate with the young children they have been sung to over the centuries. That is because they have their origins not in the nursery at all but in the workplace or in the recreational spaces of rural and working class people as well as from popular plays and travelling shows of the day. Political, historical, satirical and romantic themes can be found amongst the wide range of nursery rhymes still available to us. It is of course at our discretion that we carefully choose which ones to pass on and when.

Each anthology of nursery rhymes has its own way of categorising the wealth of literature within its pages. The Opies have chosen groupings such as: Baby Games and Lullabies, Street Songs, Charms and Invocations, Feasts, Furores, Chinese Counting, Good Counsel and Good Manners, Worldly or Weather Wise, and Songs in Season. Simply the way the rhymes have been grouped shows their richness and depth. We are not simply dealing with didactic finger plays or educational alphabet songs. We are dealing with the stuff of life! As Waldorf teachers, categories such as the seasons, animals, festivals and celebrations, fairy tales and myths are helpful when choosing which nursery rhymes to introduce to which age group. The fact that the rhymes vary greatly in length also gives us the opportunity of bringing a great many of the short rhymes, stringing them together according to theme, or introducing a longer rhyme over the course of several weeks.

In many ways nowadays, we have come to a place in our understanding of children and childhood which has removed the world of the child so far from the world of the adult, that we have almost no point of overlap. Especially when it comes to what we believe children want to sing along to. The wheels on the bus go round and round is perfectly fine as a song and also perfectly banal. The children can undoubtedly sing it for hours on end. They can do the actions, they can understand the meaning almost immediately and they can go away from the song none the wiser. Nursery rhymes have a knack of appealing to the playful nonsense of children's minds as well as having a clever insightful spark which adults appreciate. In both cases they always awaken a sense of the poetic, which runs as deeply in children as in adults. Nursery rhymes also engage with and activate the language in a way that more modern children's songs rarely do. When we bring this type of language which, for example uses word-play, to the children of the lower school, we are teaching them about the multilayered meanings of words but without having to explain anything. They are picking it up unconsciously. They are grasping something essential about the English language before they even have the means of understanding it cognitively.

The vocabulary young children encounter whilst singing and reciting nursery rhymes is plentiful and rich. It is full of language, both peculiar and mundane. There are everyday nouns, like dog, house, candle and pot as well as those particular to the English language and culture such as pie, penny and pantry. The great age of most of these rhymes result in many archaic words also making their way into the spoken repertoire of the children: dame and damsel, halfpenny or tuppence, thee and thou, wither and thither, quoth, broth and doth to name but a few. Words, still understood today but whose signifier has changed can be found in words like market, maid, fiddle and pail. Then there are regional accents and dialects, which had their influences on the rhymes and which are automatically and unconsciously learnt. Scottish vernacular such as bonny, blithe, wee, aye and ken.

Farmyard animals and many different types of birds native to the British Isles – referred to by name – are things that the children will meet whilst learning nursery rhymes. They will inhabit castles and villages, they will dance around the May Pole [iii] and feel the North Wind blow [iv]. They will be chastised by master tradesmen unhappy with the work of their apprentices [v] and they will be sent to bed without any bread by overwhelmed mothers with too many children and no decent place to live [vi]. It is not all sweetness and light, by any means, in the world of nursery rhymes but it is always rich in imagery and wide in its breadth of language.

In Waldorf foreign language education, we consider poetic language to be essential. More important, even, than functional or pragmatic language. Poetic language speaks to the imagination, it awakens images in the mind rather than pointing to and explaining things in the outside world. It brings the part of us alive, which is in awe of life and the world around us. It does not define, it illuminates. That is why we remain committed to filling our language lessons with this type of language. In the middle and upper school poems and literature take on this role. In the lower school, nursery rhymes fit the description perfectly. They are miniature poems and stories, suited for the little one. Particularly the fact that nursery rhymes often contain words from dialects from across the British Isles means that the children have access to what one might call a kind of spiritual core of the English language.

 

How pupils respond to nursery rhymes and ways to implement them in lessons: Observations and experiences

Quantifying one’s observations from lessons is not easily done. What I can do is to give my honest impression of how nursery rhymes have particularly affected the children I have taught over the years. What I have found again and again is that there is a certain grounding energy to nursery rhymes. With one particularly wiggly class 2 I decided to start adding Lavenders Blue [vii] to the end of the lesson, just before our closing verse. As if by magic, the children grew quiet, drifting along on the dreamy melody and sing-songy nonsense words “dilly, dilly” seemed to work like a charm. Even a student teacher whom I was mentoring at the time commented on the phenomena. Every class 3 I look forward to introducing Bobby Shaftoe [viii]. Without fail, boys and girls alike join in immediately with the cheerful upbeat song of a girl waiting for her beaux to come back from sea. It certainly helps that I also never get tired of singing it! Miss Polly Had a Dolly [ix] is such a big hit in class 1 that singing it well into class 2 is usually necessary before letting it go. We feel deeply with Polly's concern for her poor sick dolly and feel relieved that the doctor has given a remedy he is confident will take effect by the morning.

One day, a boy in a class 1 of mine had to be taken to the sick room directly after the lesson to wait for his mother to pick him up. He had had a hard time adjusting to school life in general and was frequently engaged in conflicts with other children which often resulted in physical altercations. English was not on his radar at all so far. If I recall correctly, he spent most of my lessons under a desk. That day had been particularly taxing (for everyone). As I sat with him, waiting for his mum to arrive, we chatted about this and that and I discovered that he enjoyed fishing. The next lesson I introduced 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive [x]. I peeked at his reaction and saw that his face had lit up and he was joining in with the gestures. Nursery rhymes can even be medicinal!

The plethora of different topics, tempos and emotional temperatures within the canon of nursery rhymes means that teachers can find a rhyme to go with practically every requirement of the lesson. There are rhymes for standing, for sitting, for moving, for staying still, for being loud and rambunctious or for being quiet and wistful. For getting from A to B, for example from the school yard to the classroom or vice versa, marching verses like The Grand Old Duke of York or Hark [xi], Hark the Dogs Do Bark [xii] do well for keeping the children together and moving in one direction. Outside or in rooms with plenty of space, everyone can trot behind the lead horse with a rhyme like Horsey, Horsey Do Not Stop [xiii]. This gives children with a strong urge to command the attention of everyone in the class the chance to lead and have everyone follow along, doing as they do. Hide and seek games can be incorporated into lessons with rhymes like Whose Little Pigs are These? [xiv] or Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone? [xv]

Counting games abound: One, Two Buckle My Shoe [xvi], One for Sorrow, Two for Joy [xvii] to name a couple. Practically all nursery rhymes can be adapted into some kind of finger play or clapping game, so if one is at a loss for which gestures to use, creating a simple clapping game to go along with the rhythm of the words is a way to include a rhyme one likes to implement into a lesson. Pat-a-cake [xviii] is a classic clapping game and Here is the Church, Here is the Steeple [xix] and Here are Mother's Knives and Forks [xx] are traditional finger plays with predetermined actions for the fingers.

A great number of nursery rhymes lend themselves to tiny role plays. Six Little Mice Sat Down to Spin [xxi] will occupy 7 children in active roles while the rest of the class sings along to the story of the clever mice who draw a healthy boundary for the cat who does her best to circumvent it (but doesn't succeed). Sing a Song of Sixpence [xxii] has a King counting money, a Queen eating bread and honey and a maid hanging out clothes: all very clear actions which can be played with much gusto and comic effect. In fact, even the black bird at the end of the rhyme who makes off with the unfortunate maid's nose begs to be played by a cheeky chap or chapess! Simple props are useful for the staging of such rhymes. But even without props, gestures are vital.

With well thought out gestures to go with the rhymes, children can enter into states of dreamy wonder or relaxed enjoyment. They can perceive the gist of the words without having to nail down the meaning. Their imagination ignited and their natural curiosity peaked. In order to use gestures as an underpinning of the meaning of words, it is important to give them much consideration. Words which reappear in different contexts should be given the same gesture. For example, if your King in Old King Cole [xxiii] is symbolised by a crown made with your hands and outstretched fingers around your head, then your King of Spain in I Had a Little Nut Tree [xxiv] needs to be wearing the same crown. And if all your Kings have the crown, what will indicate the Queens? A different type of crown, perhaps? Or a gown? Or a Queen Elizabeth II type of royal wave? Developing one's own gestural lexicon for all the various animals which appear in the nursery rhymes will bring hours of fun! What is the difference between your dog and your cat? What about a rabbit? If they all have ears, how are the children going to distinguish them? How can you distil the essence of the animal into a simple gesture? Is the dog eager to please? Find a gesture for that! A cow: does she have horns or is the most distinctive thing about the cow that she can be milked?

It is as rewarding as it is fun to play around with different possibilities and land on the one which feels right to you. The children's inbuilt capacity to mimic you will mean that the degree to which you yourself inhabit the gestures and imbue them with their meaning, will be the degree to which the children will enter into those meanings and thus learn the language in a playful, unconscious way.

There are countless nursery rhymes in which specific geographical locations within the British Isles are referred to. Take Oranges and Lemons [xxv]: originally appearing in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook (1744) and consisting of multiple verses, the song names churches in the City of London and there is a dance-game that goes along with it. In the lower school this can be taught and enjoyed in a class 2 or 3, in the middle school it can be referred back to when exploring the landmarks of London and in the upper school the rhyme will crop up in a number of books and movies that the students might be taught or come across by themselves, for example: George Orwell's 1984, Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo or in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Nursery Rhymes are indeed constantly cropping up in art, literature and pop culture. As one example, David Bowie's iconic hit, Heroes contains the line “when I am king, you shall be queen”a clear reference to the song Lavender's Blue. The famous film starring Jack Nicholson entitled One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a quote from the last line of the nursery rhyme vintery mintery cuttery corn [xxvi]. If the young people we teach have nursery rhymes within their consciousness, as part of their inner reference points, they will be able to engage with the English-speaking culture in a more complete way.

As an English friend of mine who spent much of her childhood and youth at boarding school confessed to me recently, for some rhymes she only knows the ‘joke’ versions. That is, the versions where the words are changed by ‘modern day’ children but the rhyme sequence, the melody and general structure stays the same. Usually, the rhymes are given a humorous twist or made to sound ‘rude’. Depending on what way the rhyme has been distorted, these newer versions can also be used as a resource in the classroom. If, for example, we have introduced the traditional version of a rhyme in a class 1 or 2, we can surprise the children by bringing the joke version of it back in class 5 or 6! One could even give the rewriting of familiar nursery rhymes as a creative task in the middle or upper school. The Mad Hatter's warping of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star [xxvii] in Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland into Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat [xxviii] is one famous example of just this poetic licence. Other examples are included in the endnotes [xxix].

Folk songs are the natural siblings of nursery rhymes and if our pupils are used to the rhythm, rhyme and the expressions of nursery rhymes from their language lessons in the lower school, they will naturally gravitate to and appreciate ancient folk songs in the middle or upper school.

Having sung the praises of nursery rhymes, I would like to point out that a critical look at their content is also necessary. One glance through the pages of any comprehensive collection of nursery rhymes will make immediately clear to any sensitive teacher that not all nursery rhymes were created equal! Some use such overtly racist or sexist language that it goes without saying that the case I am making here does not include such verses.

Outdated stereotyping of male and female characteristics can be found in rhymes such as:

What are little boys made of?

Frogs and snails and puppy-dog's tails

….

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice and all things nice.

In some versions of the third verse of Jack and Jill the unhelpful trope of girls being made responsible for the actions of a boys is reinforced:

Jill came in and she did grin

To see Jack's paper plaster

Her mother, vexed, did beat her next

For causing Jack's disaster.

Even rhymes which we find perhaps too proscriptive or corrective in their language can be quietly put to rest and not passed on to the children we wish to bring up in freedom and relationship without such language as ‘naughty' and ‘good’. Finding the rhymes which resonate most with us and weeding out those whose pejorative or offensive contents exclude them, in our eyes, from posterity is part of the challenge of working with nursery rhymes. What makes this choice particularly important is the fact that we cannot (and should not) enter into discussion with the pupils about the content of the words and phrases they are using. What becomes possible in the late-middle and in the upper school, namely, an engagement with the form and ideas within the rhymes is not part of how we teach in the lower school. The stereotyping is simply absorbed unconsciously. This can be harmful and we would do well to pay close attention to our choices. Since nursery rhymes come from such a variety of sources, we needn't ‘cancel’ them all! Sometimes changing one word or leaving out a verse suffices to make it palatable.

We are free to be as creative as we wish. One recently published book called Nursery Rhymes for Feminist Times – What are Little Girls Made Of by Jeanne Willis and Isabelle Follath rewrites traditional nursery rhymes with an emphasis on the autonomy and self-efficacy of the women and girls portrayed in them. The Opies themselves are very un-precious about changes made to the rhymes along the way. In their eyes, the rhymes have always drawn their life-force from the oral tradition into which they were born and so it should continue: “Oral tradition recognizes no 'correct' versions: the only defensible version is how one knows it oneself” (Opie, The Oxford Nursery Rhyme book, 1967, p.vi).

 

Conclusion

If there is such a thing as the spirit of a language then nursery rhymes have an intrinsic value. If poetic language is vital in the development of the human soul, then nursery rhymes hold treasures which can be discovered and mined without depletion for all the years of the lower school. If bringing rich, authentic language with a broad vocabulary as well as nourishing images to children at the very onset of their engagement with the language is what we are committed to doing in Waldorf foreign language teaching, then nursery rhymes have it all. Last but not least, dear friends and co-teachers, nursery rhymes are fun! For all these reasons, I would encourage you not to forego the great benefits and gifts of including them in our English language lessons.
 

References

Opie, Iona and Peter (1967): The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, Oxford University Press.

Opie, Iona and Peter (1997): The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford University Press.

Willis, Jeanne and Follath, Isabelle (2020): What Are Little Girls Made Of?, Nosy Crow Ltd.

 

List of Nursery Rhymes

[i] Tom, Tom the piper's son

Stole a pig and away did run

The pig was eat and Tom was beat

Tom went a-roaring down the street.

[ii]Hot-cross buns, hot cross buns

One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.

If you have no daughters give them to your sons

One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.

[iii]All around the May pole, May pole, May pole

All around the May pole and now Miss Sally won't you bow?

And now Miss Sally won't you jump for joy, jump for joy, jump for joy

And now Miss Sally won't you jump for joy and now Miss Sally won't you bow?

[iv]The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

I'll sit in a bar to keep himself warm

With his head tucked under his wing, poor thing

With he head tucked under his wing.

[v]See-saw Margory Daw, Johnny shall have a new master

He shall earn but a penny a day because he can't work any faster.

[vi]There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

Had so many children, she didn't know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread

She spanked them al soundly and sent them to bed.

[vii]Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green

When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen.

Call up your men, dilly dilly, send them to work

Some to the plough, dilly dilly, some to the cart.

Some to make hay, dilly dilly, some to thresh corn

While you and I, dilly dilly, keep ourselves warm

[viii] Bobby Shaftoe went to sea, silver buckle on his knee

He'll come back and marry me, bonny Bobby Shaftoe

Bobby Shaftoe's tall and fair, combing down his yellow hair

He's my en for ever mehr, bonny Bobby Shaftoe.

[ix]Miss Polly had a dolly who was sick, sick, sick.

So she phoned for the doctor to come quick, quick, quick.

The doctor came with his bag and his hat,

And knocked at the door with a rat-a-tat-tat.

He looked at the dolly and shook his head,

And said “Miss Polly put her straight to bed.

He wrote a paper for a pill, pill, pill.

She'll be better in the morning, yes she will, will, will.

[x]One, two, three, four, five,

Once I caught a fish alive.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

Then I let it go again.

Why did you let it go?

Because it bit my finger so.

Which finger did it bite?

This little finger on the right.

[xi]Oh, the grand old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up

And when they were down, they were down

And when they were only half-way up

They were neither up nor down.

[xii] Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,

The beggars are coming to town

Some in rags, and some in jags,

And one in a velvet gown.

[xiii] Horsey, horsey do not stop

Just let your hooves go clippety clop

Let your tail go swish and the wheels go round

Giddy-up, we're homeward bound.

[xiv]Whose little pigs are these, these, these?

Whose little pigs are these?

They are Roger the cook's, I know them by their looks

I found them amongst my peas.

Go pound them, go pound them

I dare not on my life

For though I love not Roger the cook,

I dearly love his wife.

[xv] Where, oh where has my little dog gone?

Oh where, oh where can he be?

With his ears cut short

And his tail cut long

Oh where, oh where can he be?

[xvi] One, two, buckle my shoe;

Three, four, knock at the door;

Five, six, pick up sticks;

Seven, eight, lay them straight:

Nine, ten, a big fat hen;

Eleven, twelve, dig and delve;

Thirteen, fourteen, maids a-courting;

Fifteen, sixteen, maids in the kitchen;

Seventeen, eighteen, maids a-waiting

Nineteen, twenty, my plate’s empty.

[xvii] One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret,

Never to be told!

Eight for a wish,

Nine for a kiss,

Ten for a bird,

You must not miss.

[xviii] Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can,

Pat it and prick it and mark it with B,

And pop it in the oven for baby and me.

[xix]Here is the church, here is the steeple

Open the doors and here are all the people

Here is the parson, climbing the stairs

Here he is saying his prayers.

[xx]These are mother's knives and forks

This is mother's table

Here's the lady's looking glass

And here's the baby's cradle.

[xxi] Six little mice sat down to spin,

Pussy cat passed and she peeped in.

What are you doing, my little men?

Weaving coats for gentlemen.

Shall I come in and cut off your threads?

No, no, pussy cat, you’d bite off our heads!

Oh, no, I’ll not, I’ll help you spin.

That may be so, but you don’t come in.

[xxii] Sing a song of sixpence

A pocket full of rye

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened

The birds began to sing

Wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before a king.

The king was in his counting house

Counting out his money

The queen was in the parlour

Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden

Hanging out the clothes

When down came a black bird

And pecked off her nose!

[xxiii] Old King Cole was a merry old soul

And a merry old soul was he;

He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler he had a fiddle,

And a very fine fiddle had he;

Oh there’s none so rare, as can compare

With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

[xxiv]

I had a little nut tree

Nothing would it bear

But a silver nutmeg

And a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter

Came to visit me,

And all for the sake

Of my little nut tree.

Her dress was made of crimson

Jet black was her hair

She asked me for my nutmeg

And my golden pear.

I said, "So fair a princess

Never did I see

I'll give you all the fruit

From my little nut tree.

[xxv] Oranges and lemons

Say the bells of St. Clement's.

You owe me five farthings

Say the bells of St. Martin's.

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich

Say the bells of Shoreditch.

And when will that be?

Say the bells of Stepney.

Oh, I do not know

Say the great bells of Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed.

And here comes a chopper to chop off your head

Chip-chop, chip-chop, the last man's dead.

[xxvi]

Intery, mintery, cuttery corn,

Apple-seed and apple-thorn,

Wire, brier, limber lock,

Three geese all in a white flock;

One fly east and some fly west

And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

[xxvii] Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

How I wonder what you are.

[xxviii] Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little bat

How I wonder what you're at.

[xxix]Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Said “oh no!Not scrambled eggs again!”

Jack Sprat could eat no fat

His wife could eat not lean

And so between them bother, you see

They licked the platter clean.

Jack Sprat was one call cat

Played guitar in a cowboy hat

His wife was surly, vicious and mean

And so he ran off with a beauty queen.

 

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