The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes

The roads are good and the weather’s grand,
So I’m off to play in the Hobo Band;
With a gaspipe flute and a cowhide drum
I’m going to make the music come.
With a toot, toot, toot, and a dum, dum, dum,
Just hear me make the music come!

A robin and a wren, as they walked along one night,
Saw a big brown beetle on a broomstraw.
Said the robin to the wren: “What a pretty, pretty sight—
That big brown beetle on a broomstraw!”
So they got their plates and knives,
Their children and their wives,
And gobbled up the beetle on the broomstraw.

A silly little mule
Sat on a milking stool
And tried to write a letter to his father.
But he couldn’t find the ink,
So he said: “I rather think
This writing letters home is too much bother.”

A candle, a candle
To light me to bed;
A pillow, a pillow
To tuck up my head.
The moon is as sleepy as sleepy can be,
The stars are all pointing their fingers at me,
And Missus Hop-Robin, way up in her nest,
Is rocking her tired little babies to rest.
So give me a blanket
To tuck up my toes,
And a little soft pillow
To snuggle my nose.

Baxter had a billy-goat
Wall-eyed and double jointed.
He took him to the barber shop
And had his head anointed.

Loddy, Gin, and Ella Zander
Rode to market on a gander;
Bought a crane for half a dollar;
Loddy led him by the collar.

Mister Crane said: “Hi there, master,
Can’t you make your legs work faster?
We can’t poke along this way.”
Then he slowly flew away.
Loddy held him fast, you bet,
And he hasn’t come home yet.

As I was going down the hill
In front of Missus Knapp’s
I saw the little Knapperines
All in their winter wraps—
Purple mitts and mufflers
And knitted jersey caps.

As I was coming back again
In front of Missus Knapp’s
I saw that awful lady
Give about a dozen slaps
To every little Knapperine—
I thought it was, perhaps,
Because they gathered stickers
In their knitted jersey caps.

A little boy ran to the end of the sky
With a rag and a pole and a gooseberry pie.
He cried: “Three cheers for the Fourth of July!”
With a rag and a pole and a gooseberry pie.

He saw three little donkeys at play,
He tickled their noses to make them bray,
And he didn’t come back until Christmas Day—
With a rag and a pole and a gooseberry pie.

A man with a nickel,
A sword, and a sickle,
A pipe, and a paper of pins
Set out for the Niger
To capture a tiger—
And that’s how my story begins.

When he saw the wide ocean,
He soon took a notion
’T would be nicer to stay with his friends.
So he traded his hat
For a tortoise-shell cat—
And that’s how the chronicle ends.

A beetle once sat on a barberry twig,
And turned at the crank of a thingum-a-jig.
Needles for hornets, nippers for ants,
For the bumblebee baby a new pair of pants,
For the grizzled old gopher a hat and a wig,
The beetle ground out of his thingum-a-jig.

Tibbitts and Bibbitts and Solomon Sly
Ran off one day with a cucumber pie.
Tibbitts was tossed by a Kensington cow,
Bibbitts was hanged on a brambleweed bough,
And poor little Solomon—what do you think?
Was drowned one dark night in a bottle of ink.

Some one told Maria Ann,
Maria Ann told me,
That kittens ride in coffee cans
Upon the Irish Sea.

From quiet caves to rolling waves,
How jolly it must be
To travel in a coffee can
Upon the Irish Sea!

But when it snows and when it blows,
How would you like to be
A kitten in a coffee can
Upon the Irish Sea?

Duckle, duckle, daisy,
Martha must be crazy,
She went and made a Christmas cake
Of olive oil and gluten-flake,
And set it in the sink to bake,
Duckle, duckle, daisy.

I’ve got a new book from my Grandfather Hyde.
It’s skin on the cover and paper inside,
And reads about Arabs and horses and slaves,
And tells how the Caliph of Bagdad behaves.
I’d not take a goat and a dollar beside
For the book that I got from my Grandfather Hyde.

A carrot in a garden
And a rabbit in the wood.
Said the rabbit, “Beg your pardon,
But you’re surely meant for food;
Though you’ve started in to harden,
You may still be very good.”

Hippy-Hi-Hoppy, the big fat toad,
Greeted his friends at a turn of the road.

Said he to the snail:
“Here’s a ring for your tail
If you’ll go into town for my afternoon mail.”

Said he to the rat:
“I have talked with the cat;
And she’ll nab you so quick you won’t know where you’re at.”

Said he to the lizard:
“I’m really no wizard,
But I’ll show you a trick that will tickle your gizzard.”

Said he to the lark:
“When it gets fairly dark
We’ll chase the mosquitoes in Peek-a-Boo Park.”

Said he to the owl:
“If it were not for your scowl
I’d like you as well as most any wild fowl.”

Said he to the wren:
“You’re tiny, but then
I’ll marry you quick, if you’ll only say when.”

Set me up on the garden gate
And put on my Sunday tie;
I want to be there
With a round-eyed stare
When the circus band goes by.

Give me a bag of suckerettes
And give me a piece of gum,
Then I’ll get down
And treat the clown,
And give the monkey some.

’Most any chip
Will do for a ship,
If only the cargo be
Golden sand
From the beautiful land
Of far-off Arcady.
For faith will waft
The tiny craft
O’er Fancy’s shining sea.

Who hung his hat on the moon?
The owl in his bubble balloon.
One bright summer night
He sailed out of sight,
And, hooting like Lucifer, hung in delight
His three-cornered hat on the moon.

“What makes you laugh, my little lass,
From morning until noon?”
“I saw a dappled donkey
Throwing kisses at the moon.”

When Timmy O’Toole
Was going to school
He picked up a package of gum.
He treated the preacher
And Sunday-school teacher,
And gave a policeman some.

A man came from Malden to buy a blue goose.
And what became of the gander?
He went and got tipsy on blackberry juice,
And that was the end of the gander.

The mighty baron, Batteroff,
Raised a whale in a watering trough.
When the whale grew large and fat
He ate the baron’s brindle cat.
But pussy, once inside the whale,
Began to tickle with her tail.
This the monster could not stand,
And spewed her out upon dry land.
That night, when all was fine as silk
And she had supped her bread and milk,
She grinned and told old Batteroff
How she got the whale to cough.

I sing a funny song from away out west,
Of six little salmon with their hats on;
How they all left home—but I forget the rest—
The six little salmon with their hats on.

Oh, I want to go to Garry
On the toot-toot, toot-toot,
You and I together
On the toot-toot, toot-toot.
Go run and ask your mother
For some kind of cake or other,
And a bit of cotton wadding
For your ball-suit.
Get your bobber and a bat,
And be back as quick as scat,
For we’ve got to go to Garry
On the toot-toot.

Bobbin rode a rocking-horse
’Way down to Doubbledoon,
He told his little sister
He’d be back that afternoon.
But maybe after all she didn’t
Understand him right,
For he wasn’t back again
Till the middle of the night.

And what did little Bobbin see
’Way down at Doubbledoon?
He saw a crazy Arab
Throwing bubbles at the moon,
A monkey making faces
And a rabbit in a rage,
A parrot shouting “Murder!”
From the ceiling of his cage.

At last a yellow jumping-jack,
A camel, and a coon,
Chased poor little Bobbin
All the way from Doubbledoon.

Billy Bluebird had a party
In an elder tree,
But the little black-eyed smarty
Didn’t ask us to his party
Neither you nor me.

This is what they had for dinner,
For I peeked to see:
Apple seeds and beetle finner,
And for drink the little sinner
Gave them tansy tea.

But there came an awful clatter
From that elder tree,
When he served them on a platter
Hopper-hash and brick-dust batter
Trimmed with celery!

All the folks were hale and hearty,
Happy as could be;
And that little black-eyed smarty
Left out of his funny party
Only you and me.

I’ve got a yellow puppy,
And I’ve got a speckled hen,
I’ve got a lot of little
Spotted piggies in a pen.
I’ve got a gun that used to shoot,
Another one that squirts,
I’ve got some horehound candy
And a pair of woolen shirts.
I’ve got a little rubber ball
They use for playing golf,
And mamma thinks that’s maybe why
I’ve got the whooping-cough.

Doctor McSwattle
Filled up a bottle
With vinegar, varnish, and rum.
And offered a swallow
To all who would follow
The call of his trumpet and drum.
It’s good, I am told,
For a cough or a cold;
It’s good for a pain in your thumb.

Columbus sailed over the ocean blue
To find the United States.
In three small ships he carried his crew,
And none of the three were mates.

He found a land in the western seas,
And Indians galore,
With jabbering parrots in the trees,
And sharks along the shore.

Haven’t you heard of Terrible Tim!
Well, don’t you get in the way of him.
He eats lions for breakfast
And leopards for lunch,
And gobbles them down
With one terrible crunch.
He could mix a whole city
All up in a mess,
He could drink up a sea
Or an ocean, I guess.
You’d better be watching for Terrible Tim,
And run when you first get your peepers on him.

“What’s the use,”
Said the goose,
“To swim like a frog,
When you go just as far
If you float on a log?”

“Why should I,”
Said the fly,
“Suck an old apple-core,
When there’s sugar and fruit
In the grocery store?”

“It’s but right,”
Said the kite,
“That I follow the wind.
What’s a fellow to do
If he hasn’t a mind?”

“You’ll allow,”
Said the cow,
“That I’m really no thief,
When I turn all the clover
I steal, into beef.”

“Come again,”
Said the hen,
“On some other fine day.
Don’t think ’cause I cackle
I always must lay.”

All aboard for Bombay,
All aboard for Rome!
Leave your little sisters
And your loving aunts at home.

Bring a bit of bailing wire,
A pocketful of nails,
And half a dozen wiener-wursts
For every man that sails.

Tell Terry Tagg, when you go by,
Be sure to bring his dog.
All aboard for Bombay
On a floating cedar log!

There’s water in the rain barrel,
And water in the well,
There’s lots of water in the pond
Where Hannah Hawkins fell.

There’s water in the ocean,
And water in the skies,
And when a fellow blubbers
He gets water in his eyes.

But in the Barca desert
Where the hippodoodles play,
The water in the rivers
Just dries up and blows away.

Old Molly is lowing and lowing
’Way down in the old meadow lot.
I’ve given her water and clover,
And all of the apples I’ve got;
But she won’t eat a thing that I give her,
And never drinks even a sup,
For they’ve taken her baby to market
And some one has eaten it up.
I’d just like to go to the city
And cut them all up into halves
And feed them to sharks and to lions—
Those people that eat little calves.

The snowflakes are falling by ones and by twos;
There’s snow on my jacket, and snow on my shoes;
There’s snow on the bushes, and snow on the trees—
It’s snowing on everything now, if you please.

Dippy-Dippy-Davy,
Half the Royal Navy
In the dampness and the dark
Was driving off a savage shark
To Dippy-Dippy-Davy.

When I’m as rich as Uncle Claus,
With whiskers on my chin,
I’m going to have a great big house
To put my people in.

I’ll never let them wander out
Or ride with me to town;
They’ll come a-running when I shout
And tremble when I frown.

I’ll have some men in soldier tents,
A pirate and his mate,
And wildcats all around the fence,
And mad dogs on the gate.

Rinky-tattle, rinky-tattle,
Rinky-tattle—who?
Little Tommy Taylor
Is a rinky-tattle too.

Twenty little snowflakes climbing up a wire.
“Now, listen,” said their mother, “don’t you climb up any higher.
The sun will surely catch you, and scorch you with his fire.”
But the naughty little snowflakes didn’t mind a word she said,
Each tried to clamber faster than his fellow just ahead;
They thought that they’d be back in time enough to go to bed.
But they found out that their mother wasn’t quite the dunce they thought her,
The sun bobbed up—remember this, my little son and daughter—
And turned those twenty snowflakes into twenty drops of water.

Slippery Slim, a garter snake,
Leaned against a garden rake
And smiled a sentimental smile
At Tilly Toad, on the gravel pile,
Till that bashful miss was forced to hop
And hide her face in a carrot-top.

Through fog and rain
I run my train
Wherever the track is laid,
And over the road
I carry a load
Whenever the freight is paid.

A kaddy of tea
For Genessee,
For Troy an empty crate,
A man in brown
For Uniontown
To help them celebrate.

No one at home in the hen-house,
And no one at home in the barn,
Old Brindle has gone to the neighbor’s
To borrow a skein of brown yarn,
To borrow yarn for the darning
Of socks for her wee spotted calf—

The little rollicking rascal
Has never enough by half.
And Speckle is down by the willow
Washing her chicks in the lake,
While old Daddy Cockle is lying
Abed with a bad toothache.

Patters had a gallant band,
An army made of clay.
But Tatters took the garden hose
And washed them all away.

Crown the king with carrot tops,
Dress him in sateen,
Give him lots of licorice drops,
With suckers in between.

For he’s a king with lots of power
And awful, awful fierce,
He kills a pirate every hour
And washes in his tears.

He rides a charger ten feet high,
A dashing, dappled gray;
Has ginger pop and lemon pie
For breakfast every day.

So get a royal canopy,
The finest ever seen,
And whiskers for his majesty,
And tresses for the queen.

A Canada goose
On the South Palouse
Is singing her summer song.
Her words are wise,
And she greets the skies
With a voice like a steamer gong:
“If you harbor your wealth
And keep your health,
You’ll always be rich and strong.”

Hipperty, clickerty, clackerty, bang,
Get in a corner as fast as you can!
The sideboard is tipsy, the table is mad,
The chairs have lost all the sense that they had.
So hipperty, clickerty, clackerty, bang,
Get in a corner as fast as you can!

A sailor gave his sonny
Nearly half a pint of money
And sent him out to buy a ton of coal;
But he met a poor old miser
Who told him it were wiser
To bury all his money in a hole.

A sailor gave his sonny
Nearly half a pint of money
And told him he should buy a suit of clothes;
But he saw a pretty maiden
With all kinds of posies laden,
And he gave her all his money for a rose.

Then the sailor gave his sonny
Nearly half a pint of money
To buy a little garden and a house;
But he found him the next day,
In a shop on Yesler Way,
A-buying cheese and crackers for a mouse.

A stove is a thing that gets awfully hot,
And fries up your meat, or whatever you’ve got.
It’s made out of iron and hinges and screws,
And filled up with shakers, and dampers, and flues.
It’s not very long and it’s not very wide;
It’s got black’ning on top and ashes inside.

Have you heard of the Thunder Baby
Way up in the big blue sky?
You’ve seen his cradle, maybe,
And maybe you’ve heard him cry.

Most of the time he’s sleeping,
Rolled up in a big white cloud,
But when he’s awake and hungry
He bellows awfully loud.

And when he’s crying, sometimes
You can hear his teardrops fall
With a patter, patter, patter,
Against the garden wall.

But when he’s madder’n mischief,
He rolls, and growls, and spits,
And kicks the clouds all forty ways,
And gives the weather fits.

Then tears come down in bucketfuls,
And children dance for joy,
Till the sun comes out and soundly spanks
Her Thunder Baby Boy.

Hinky, pinky, pearly earl,
Twenty nobles and a churl;
Some are fat and some are lean,
One in red and one in green—
Prior, priest, and pearly earl,
Twenty nobles and a churl.

Tipsy Tom, the naughty fellow,
Dressed his wife in pink and yellow,
Set her in an apple tree,
And said: “Now catch a bumblebee.”

Jolly Jinks, the sailor man,
Went to sea in an oyster can.
But he found the water wet,
Fishes got into his net,
So he pulled his boat to shore
And vowed he’d sail the seas no more.

Auntie Ellen found her poodle—
Mercy! Goodness sake!—
Playing with the mully-wumps
Down along the lake.

And when she called him tenderly
He didn’t want to come;
It took her over half an hour
To get the rascal home.

She washed him well with shaving-soap,
Pumice stone and lye,
She showered him and she scoured him
And she hung him up to dry.

And now he sits there quite serene,
The sweetest poodle ever seen.

Bricks and bones!
Sticks and stones!
I chased a thief through twenty zones.

I found his hat
On Ararat,
And hurried on as quick as scat.

In a day or two
I found his shoe
Where he had sailed for Timbuktu.

I met the goat
That ate his coat
Upon the road to Terre Haute.

At last all worn
And quite forlorn
I chased him up the Matterhorn.

Somebody give me a peanut,
Somebody give me a pear;
I want to go down to the circus
And feed all the animals there.

A dime and a dollar
Took me by the collar
And whispered this word in my ear:
“We must leave you to-morrow,
But prithee don’t sorrow,
We’ll come back to see you next year.”

Said the Robin to the Squirrel,
“How d’ you do?”
Said the Squirrel to the Robin,
“How are you?”
“Oh, I’ve got some cherry pies,
And a half a dozen flies,
And a kettle full of beetles on to stew.”

The King had a platter
Of brisket and batter,
The Prince had a Bellington bun,
The Queen had a rose
To put to her nose
As soon as the dinner was done.

The lightning split the sky in two
And set the clouds to leaking
Just as dear old Pastor Brown
Began his Sunday speaking.

He told about the awful rain
That fell in Noah’s day,
And one by one the happy smiles
Began to fade away.

In half an hour the people all
Put on their rubber coats,
And when he finished everyone
Was out and building boats.

Old Father McNether
He sorts out the weather
And takes what he pleases, I’m told,
With a big turkey-feather
He mixes the weather,
And makes it blow hot and blow cold.

Jerry was a joker.
He carried off the poker
And dressed it up from head to heel
In clover-tops and orange-peel
And fed it bones and barley meal.
Poor old Rusty Poker!

Old Missus Skinner
Had dumplings for dinner
And sat on a very high stool;
When she cut thru the hide
There was nothing inside,
Which I’m sure was not often the rule.