Part 7

_Chorus_: Ba-ba, black wool, Have you any sheep? Yes, sir, a pack-full, Creep, mouse, creep!

Four-and-twenty little maids Hanging out the pie, Out jumped the honey-pot, Guy-Fawkes, Guy! Cross-latch, cross-latch, Sit and spin the fire, When the pie was opened, The bird was on the brier!

MISS WAVER

Little Miss Waver Sings with a quaver, A musical maid is she; Her voice is as clear As any you hear-- Let little Miss Waver be.

JEREMY JANGLE

Jeremy Jangle Lives in a tangle; You never know where to take him: His head is immense, And he might talk sense Perhaps, if you could but make him.

But he says that a tailor has a tail, And every sailor is made for sale, Also that bunting is made of buns! But everybody can see at once That this is nonsense. And yet his head Is large, and he calls himself well read!

STALKY JACK

I knew a boy who took long walks, Who lived on beans, and ate the stalks; To the Giants’ Country he lost his way; They kept him there for a year and a day. But he has not been the same boy since; An alteration he did evince; For you may suppose that he underwent A change in his notions of extent!

He looks with contempt on a nice high door, And tries to walk in at the second floor! He stares with surprise at a basin of soup, He fancies a bowl as large as a hoop; He calls the people minikin mites; He calls a sirloin a couple of bites! Things having come to these pretty passes, They bought him some magnifying glasses.

He put on the goggles, and said, “My eyes! The world has come to its proper size!” But all the boys cry, “Stalky John! There you go with your goggles on!” What girl would marry him--and _quite_ right-- To be taken for three times her proper height? So this comes of taking extravagant walks, And living on beans, and eating the stalks.

THE FIDDLER AND THE CROCODILE

One day a fiddler from the North, Out Memphis way, went walking forth; He smoked his pipe and winked his lids, And said, “Ah, ah! the Pyramids?”

In this that fiddler took good heed; The Pyramids were there indeed; Sing Amon-Râ, sing Gizeh town, Cheops, Cephrenes, mummy brown!

Thus said he on the banks of Nile, When out there crawled a crocodile, And when he turned, more scared than hurt, The creature seized him by the skirt.

The crocodile was fierce and strong, And twenty mortal feet was long. The fiddler said, “It has been guessed That music soothes the savage breast.”

He drew his skirt--there being a pause-- From out the alligator’s jaws; For, crocodile or alligator, The beast was something of that nature.

Sing bulrushes, sing cats and leeks, Sing tawny gods with senseless beaks, Sing scarabæi, if you’ve patience, Isis, Osiris, inundations!

The fiddler raised his violin, And to perform did next begin-- Sing lotus-flower, papyrus stiff, Sarcophagus and hieroglyph!

The district, since Amenophis, Had never heard the like of this; (Oh, to have seen the fiddler man As up and down the scale he ran!)

That crocodile sat down to hear, And to his eye there came a tear; He turned it over in his mind; His tail lay limp and long behind.

_Affettuoso_ was the plan Which struck at first that fiddler man; _Allegro_ next--his soul was stirr’d-- _Con molto brio_ was the word.

At this the alligator brute-- Or crocodile, if that will suit-- Rose, much excited, from his seat, And danced like mad, with heart and heat.

Sing Pompey, plectrum, strings and pegs, Ichneumons, sand, and serpents’ eggs, Cheops, Cephrenes, Memnon, Sphinx-- “I _knew_ it!”--so that fiddler thinks.

“I knew,” said he, with joy and jest, “That music soothes the savage breast;” He swept the strings with maddening go, From _presto_ to _prestissimo_.

But though the brute had dropped his plan Of eating up at once the man, It did not seem, his ways were such, That music yet had soothed him much.

In fact he leapt and danced like mad; He danced with all the legs he had; Our friend, with violin to shoulder, Sat, proudly playing, on a boulder.

He played until his arm grew weak, And heat-drops gathered on his cheek; He saw there would be mischief in it If he but dropped his bow a minute!

For in that alligator’s look He read, as plain as in a book, “Play on, or I will eat you yet, With appetite the sharper set!”

Just as he thought he soon must faint (And his emotions who can paint?) He felt, and saw on looking round, A curious trembling of the ground.

Thinks he, “This dancing crocodile Is shaking up the land of Nile”-- He looked again, and saw, in places, The pyramids leap from their bases!

As six or seven together rushed, He cried, “Confound it! I am crushed!” But, happy chance! a moment later They fell and crushed the alligator.

Sing Cleopatra’s almond eye, Sing reeds and hippopotami, Sing tamarisk-trees by Mœris Lake, And mud left in the sun to bake!

Then, as the fiddler wiped his brow, Says he, “I feel exhausted now!” Those ruins he no more regards Than any fallen house of cards.

Out on the sands he chanced to find A bit of temple to his mind, And, as he sat down in the shade, There came an Ethiop to his aid.

“De Hyksos,” said that nigger lad, “Dis way some secret cellarage had; Yah, massa, yah, de best ob wine; De Shepherd Kings, dey know’d de Rhine.”

He quaffed those hocks, that fiddler bold, Hocks five and thirty centuries old; The cellar-man was older still-- Sing Typhon, Ptah, or what you will.

Sing Ra, sing Sos, sing Seb, sing Khem, Sing Mycerinus, after them; Sing Diodorus Siculus, Who tells untruths, for all his fuss; Sing Manetho; but keep this clue-- The tale which _I_ have told is true.

L’ENVOI

Versification, Likewise illustration; Flowers of my growing From seed to blowing; Flowers of my finding, Gathering, and binding; Home-flower and heather Mingled together;-- Take these confusions, Ye dear Lilliputians.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

London & Edinburgh

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

Pianofore Palace stand=> Pinafore Palace stand {pg 17}

Oh, the Giant Frodgedobblum am I=> Oh, the Giant Frodgedobbulum am I {pg 139}