PRACTISING SONG.
Ri-tum tiddy-iddy, ri-tum-tum!
Here I must sit for an hour and strum:
Practising is good for a good little girl,
It makes her nose straight, and it makes her hair curl.
Ri-tum tiddy-iddy, ri-tum-ti!
Bang on the low notes and twiddle on the high.
Whether it’s a jig or the Dead March in Saul,
I sometimes often feel as if I didn’t care at all.
Ri-tum tiddy-iddy, ri-tum-tee!
I don’t mind the whole or the half-note, you see!
It’s the sixteenth and the quarter that confuse my mother’s daughter,
And the thirty-second, really, is too dreadful to be taught her.
Ri-tum tiddy-iddy, ri-tum-to!
I shall never, never, never learn the minor scale, I know.
It’s gloomier and doomier than puppy dogs a-howling,
And what’s the use of practising such melancholy yowling?
But—ri-tum tiddy-iddy, ri-tum-tum!
Still I work away with my drum, drum, drum.
For practising is good for a good little girl:
It makes her nose straight and it makes her hair curl.[A]
[A] This last line is not true, little girls; but it is hard, you know, to find good reasons for practising.
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S DANCE.
The Spanish ambassador came to see
Queen Bess, the great and glorious;
He was an hidalgo of high degree,
And she was a maid victorious.
He bowed till he touched her gilded shoe,
And he kissed the royal hand of her,
And said if she’d marry King Philip the Two,
He’d take charge of the troublesome land of her.
Chorus.—Oh! she danced, she danced, she danced,
And she pranced, she pranced, she pranced.
Oh! high and disposedly,
Tips-of-her-toesedly,
The Queen replied with a courtesy low,
“King Philip is courtly and kind, too!
But my kingdom is smaller than his, you know,
And rule it myself I’ve a mind to.
Supreme is the honor, of him to be sought;
Oblige him I’m sorry I can’t, oh!
But lest you should think you’d come hither for nought,
You shall see how I dance a coranto!”
Cho.—Oh! she danced, she danced, she danced, etc.
The Spanish ambassador hied him home,
And told how he had been tried of her;
And His Majesty swore by the Pope of Rome,
He’d break the insular pride of her.
But vain was his hope! He never could ope,
In the land of that marvellous lass, a door;
For she danced in the face of the King and the Pope,
As she danced for the Spanish ambassador.
Cho.—Oh! she danced, she danced, she danced, etc.