THE PETER PATTER BOOK
OF NURSERY RHYMES

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Jingle, jingle, Jack,
A copper down a crack.
Twenty men and all their wives,
With sticks and picks and pocket knives,
Digging for their very lives
To get the copper back.

I’m much too big for a fairy,
And much too small for a man,
But this is true:
Whatever I do,
I do it the best I can.

Did you ever play tag with a tiger,
Or ever play boo with a bear;
Did you ever put rats in the rain-barrel
To give poor old Granny a scare?

It’s fun to play tag with a tiger,
It’s fun for the bear to say “boo,”
But if rats are found in the rain-barrel
Old Granny will put you in too.

Hot mush and molasses all in a blue bowl—
Eat it, it’s good for you, sonny.
’T will make you grow tall as a telephone pole—
Eat it, it’s good for you, sonny.

Fresh fish and potatoes all on a blue plate—
Eat it up smart now, my sonny.
’T will make you as jolly and fat as Aunt Kate—
Eat it up quick now, my sonny.

Sweet milk from a nanny-goat in a blue cup—
Drink it, it’s good for you, sonny,
’T will fill you, expand you, and help you grow up,
And make a real man of you, sonny.

O it’s hippity hop to bed!
I’d rather sit up instead.
But when father says “must,”
There’s nothing but just
Go hippity hop to bed.

Away to the river, away to the wood,
While the grasses are green and the berries are good!
Where the locusts are scraping their fiddles and bows,
And the bees keep a-coming wherever one goes.

Oh, it’s off to the river and off to the hills,
To the land of the bloodroot and wild daffodils,
With a buttercup blossom to color my chin,
And a basket of burs to put sandberries in.

Our little Pat
Was chasing the cat
And kicking the kittens about.
When mother said “Quit!”
He ran off to sit
On the top of the woodpile and pout;
But a sly little grin
Soon slid down his chin
And let all the sulkiness out.

Father and mother and Bobbie will go
To see all the sights at the animal show.
Where lions and bears
Sit on dining room chairs,
Where a camel is able
To stand on a table,
Where monkeys and seals
All travel on wheels,
And a Zulu baboon
Rides a baby balloon.
The sooner you’re ready, the sooner we’ll go.
Aboard, all aboard, for the Animal Show!

Billy be nimble,
Hurry and see
Old Tommy Trimble
Climbing a tree.
He claws with his fingers
And digs with his toes.
The longer he lingers
The slower he goes.

Dickie, Dickie Dexter
Had a wife and vexed her.
She put him in a rabbit cage
And fed him peppermint and sage—
Dickie, Dickie Dexter.

On the road to Tattletown
What is this I see?
A pig upon a pedestal,
A cabbage up a tree,
A rabbit cutting capers
With a twenty dollar bill—
Now if I don’t get to Tattletown
Then no one ever will.

Polly had some china cows
And Peter had a gun.
She turned the bossies out to browse,
And Peterkin, for fun,
Just peppered them with butter beans
And blew them all to smithereens.
* * *
Now what will pretty Polly do
For milk and cream and butter too?

I went to town on Monday
To buy myself a coat,
But on the way I met a man
Who traveled with a caravan,
And bought a billy-goat.

I went to town on Tuesday
And bought a fancy vest.
I kept the pretty bucklestraps,
Buttonholes and pocketflaps,
And threw away the rest.

Where are you going, sister Kate?
I’m going to swing on the garden gate,
And watch the fairy gypsies dance
Their tim-tam-tum on the cabbage-plants—
The great big one with the purple nose,
And the tiny tad with the pinky toes.

Where are you going, brother Ben?
I’m going to build a tiger-pen.
I’ll get iron and steel and ’lectric wire
And build it a hundred feet, or higher,
And put ten tigers in it too,
And a big wildcat, and—mebbe—you.

Christopher Crump,
All in a lump,
Sits like a toad on the top of a stump.
He stretches and sighs,
And blinks with his eyes,
Bats at the beetles and fights off the flies.

A tortoise sat on a slippery limb
And played his pinky pang
For a dog-fish friend that called on him,
And this is what he sang:
“Oh, the skies are blue,
And I wait for you
To come where the willows hang,
And dance all night
By the white moonlight
To my pinky, pinky, pang!”

Tick, tock! Tick, tock!
Forty ’leven by the clock.
Tick, tock! Tick, tock!
Put your ear to Grandpa’s ticker,
Like a pancake, only thicker.
Tick, tock! Tick, tock!
Catch a squirrel in half a minute,
Grab a sack and stick him in it.
Tick, tock! Tick, tock!
Mister Bunny feeds on honey,
Tea, and taters—ain’t it funny?
Tick, tock! Tick, tock!
When he goes to bed at night,
Shoves his slippers out of sight;
That is why Old Fox, the sinner,
Had to go without his dinner.
Tick, tock! Tick, tock!
So says Grandpa’s clock.

Put down your pillow under the willow,
Hang up your hat in the sun,
And lie down to snooze as long as you choose,
For the plowing and sowing are done.

Pick up your pillow from under the willow,
And clamber out into the sun.
Get a fork and a rake for goodness’ sake,
For the harvest time has begun.

High on the mantel rose a moan—
It came from an idol carved in bone—
“Oh, it’s so lonesome here alone,
With no one near to love me!”
A cautious smile came over the face
Of a pensive maid on a Grecian vase
“Are you sure,” she said, with charming grace,
“There’s no one near to love you?”

Buster’s got a popper gun,
A reg’lar one that shoots,
And Teddy’s got an engine
With a whistler that toots.
But I’ve got something finer yet—
A pair of rubber boots.
Oh, it’s boots, boots, boots,
A pair of rubber boots!
I could walk from here to China
In a pair of rubber boots.

Butterfly, butterfly,
Sit on my chin,
Your wings are like tinsel,
So yellow and thin.

Butterfly, butterfly,
Give me a kiss;
If you give me a dozen
There’s nothing amiss.

Butterfly, butterfly,
Off to the flowers,—
Wee, soulless sprite
Of the long summer hours.

Catch a floater, catch an eel,
Catch a lazy whale,
Catch an oyster by the heel
And put him in a pail.
There’s lots of work for Uncle Ike,
Fatty Ford and me
All day long and half the night
At Beela by the sea.

“Thank you, dear,” said the big black ant,
“I’d like to go home with you now, but I can’t.
I have to hurry and milk my cows—
The aphid herds on the aster boughs.”
And the ladybug said: “No doubt it’s fine,
This milk you get from your curious kine,
But you know quite well it’s my belief
Your cows are best when turned to beef.”

“Tommy, my son,” said the old tabby cat,
“Go catch us some mice, and be sure that they’re fat.
There’s one family lives in the carpenter’s barn;
They’ve made them a nest of the old lady’s yarn.
But the carpenter has a young cat of his own
That is healthy and proud and almost full grown,
And consider it, son, an eternal disgrace
To come home at night with a scratch on your face.”

“Oh,” said the worm,
“I’m awfully tired of sitting in the trees;
I want to be a butterfly
And chase the bumblebees.”

Buzzy Brown came home from town
As crazy as a loon,
He wore a purple overcoat
And sang a Sunday tune.
Buzzy Brown came home from town
As proud as he could be,
He found three doughnuts and a bun
A-growing on a tree.

The wind came a-whooping, down Cranberry Hill
And stole an umbrella from, Mother Medill.
It picked up a paper on Patterson’s place
And carried it clean to the Rockaby Race.
And what was more shocking and awful than that,
It blew the new feather off grandmother’s hat.