Saturday, April 14, 2018

Paschal moon: bears, gowns & sarpints


Even though antics of the Klown Kar swirling around the White House provides sufficient laughs for a couple of decades, I think it’s time for something genuinely, harmlessly silly.

So, Edward Lear.


There was an Old Man on a hill,
Who seldom, if ever, stood still;
He ran up and down,
In his Grandmother’s gown,
Which adorned that Old Man on a hill.

(TBH, going all round the town in women’s clothes isn’t that much of a big deal where I come from. In fly-over country, though…)


There was an Old Man with a flute,
A sarpint ran into his boot;
But he played daay and night,
Till the sarpint took flight,
And avoided that man with a flute.

And here’s a version of the one about the Old Person from Ware (which my great-grandmother used to recite to us)—used in one of those periodicals for kids, Puzzle-Fun Comics, Spring 1946:






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