Patience is a virtue;
Secure it if you can.
Seldom possessed by a woman,
And never by a man.
and…
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why, I cannot tell.
But this I know, and know full well:
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell!
Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the house
the whole damn family
was drunk as a louse
This is actually really old. Ancient, in fact.
It’s an English translation an epigram by Martial (1st Century A.D.), that’s also been translated as:
I do not like you, Sabidius,
Do not think me overfastidious,
But if you ask why, I can only reply,
I do not like you, Sabidius.
The story for yours is that it was an off-the-cuff translation of Martial’s Latin delivered by an aggrieved student at Oxford when the school’s dean (Dr. Fell) demanded an immediate translation. It makes for a good story.
Water water wash me
I’ve got water here and soap
I’ve been in here long enough,
I think I’m clean–at least I hope
(Commenting on my younger sister’s lack of thoroughness in bathing)
At camp we always sang
On top of spaghetti
All covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed
It rolled of the table
And onto the floor
And now my poor meatball
Is yummy no more
Our family, instead of “be very careful…” has “Watch out Janie or you’ll fall in!” (Using the child’s actual name, of course.) I think this is the first I’ve heard of any other family using this rhyme. We have four generations brought up on “trot-trot” now.
I got it this way:
Pony Boy, Pony Boy, won’t you be my Pony Boy
Don’t say No, there you go, right around the track
Oh won’t you win for me, win for me, the ladies pride and joy,
Giddyup, Giddyup Giddyup Whoa!, the winner is my Pony Boy
Which would make it a racetrack song - a bit less romantic!
Mum would bounce us faster on the Giddyups and dump us off on the Whoa!
The version I was told is Whistling girls and cackling hens
come to no good ends. From my grandmother as well. There wasn’t (or I don’t remember) any parts about singing or dancing, but there was discouragements against those. Not a lot, but it’s funny how cultural baggage like these filter through the generations.
I’m reminded how I had to explain to my spouse (who was raised in a different culture) what exactly the “Ring around the Rosy” song is about. They were shocked.
My mom was fond of:
Beans, beans the magical fruit
The more you eat the more you toot
The more you toot the better you feel,
So let’s have beans at every meal!
Looks like there are several variations and verses.
We found our teacher in the puddle of blood.
There was also:
Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-te-ay!
We had no school today!
Our teacher passed away.
We shot her yesterday.
Her body in the bay
Scared all the fish away.
Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-te-ay!
We had no school today!
My Mom told me this–I don’t know where she got it:
I’m going to town to smoke my pipe,
And I won’t be back 'till broad daylight.
So don’t let the old witch in
Or I’ll beat you black-and-blue
With my old rubber shoe.
I know it’s an old poem, and my Dad didn’t make it up, but whenever one of us kids had a cold or bronchitis, he’d adopt a phony Cockney accent and recite:
It isn’t the cough that carries you off,
It’s the coffin they carries you off in.
I have no idea where that came from.
I heard it as a limerick:
There once was an eccentric old boffin,
Who remarked, in a fine fit of coughing:
“It isn’t the cough
That carries you off,
But the coffin they carries you off in.”
My Dad used to recite some bastardized German which I heard as:
"De Topoly Lohs, De Topoly Lohs, Mach Schnell, Mach Schnell <can’t remember the rest>
Which he translated as:
“The devil is loose! The devil is loose! Make haste! Make haste, and you will be great!”
Google Translates that into German as:
“Der Teufel ist los! Der Teufel ist los! Eile! Eile, und Sie werden großartig!”
Anybody recognize where that might have come from? My Google fu comes up empty. My father had no german ancestors, and was in the Pacific theater in WWII (except for the North Africa Invasion). I don’t know where he got it.
Ice a-cream, a penny a lump
The more you eat, the more you jump
The more you jump, the better you feel
So eat your ice cream at every meal.
Not so silly, but my mom had a nice rhyming nighttime prayer that she taught us; she’d learned it in her own youth in Elizabeth, N.J.:
Father, we thank thee for the night
And for the pleasant morning light
For rest, and food, and loving care
And all that makes the world so fair
Help us to do the things we should
And be to others, kind and good
For all we do, in work and play,
To grow more loving day by day.
These lyrics are by Rebecca Weston. I remember singing this in church growing up, also in New Jersey, although not Elizabeth.
Not a rhyme but
ABCD fish? L, MNO fish. OSAR! CMP?
Very close - thanks!: Father, We Thank Thee > MIDI | Rebecca J. Weston / Daniel J. Batchellor
Oh another one from my grandparents I just recalled:
Bless the meat, damn the skin, open yer mouth and shove it in! (said before a meal as a blessing)
When I was a kid the ol’ smokey was:
On top of old smokey
all covered in blood
I shot my poor teacher
with a [gun that rhymes with blood which I can’t remember]
And then the rhyme went on to describe other grizzly things that the singer did to the teacher. It was pretty horrible.
How about this one:
One bright day in the middle of the night
two dead boys got up to fight
back to back they faced eachother
drew their swords and shot one another
“and that’s the truth, I saw it all”
said the blind man, “through a hole in the wall”