Can someone tell me the whole nursery rhyme to “10 Little Indians”? I just finished the Agatha Christie play, and a couple of the lines to the poem seemed to be missing (or I picked up a badly edited edition). The stage directions include the line “Over it (the fireplace) hangs the reproduction of the “Ten Little Indians” nursery rhyme.” [Ten Little Indian Boys going out to dine/One went and choked himself…] I can’t find this edition in my old children’s books, and in any case, they were the ‘cleaned-up’ versions. Or did Agatha make this rhyme up???
I don’t know how much this helps, but the edition of Ten Little Indians that I read years ago had an editor’s note that said the title had been changed from Ten Little Niggers.
Well, I knew Agatha’s original title was, “Ten Little Pejorative Word for Persons of African Origin.” I tried searching for that first, spelt with an n and two g’s, thinking it might narrow the choices. I didn’t find it.
Then I tried just remembering the words from the movie And Then There Were None - it’s a favorite and I’ve seen it a few times. All I could remember was “a big bear hugged one,” so I gave that up and returned to searching.
I found one site that seemed to have all the words, but oddly enough, was missing the bear verse (it skips from three to one little indian boy).
But this site has them all, fourth paragraph down.
Ah. Thank you very much to both of you for answerin so quickly. I had read the play (actually several of her plays) during an all-night bout of insomnia (not that murder mysteries help insomnia) and thought I’d missed something. That original title may also explain Lombard’s line about “…the ‘N’ in the woodpile.” {Never heard that before, and don’t intend to start using it}. Now to start on the set drawing for the portfolio…sigh. Thanks again.