The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #103716   Message #2115692
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
31-Jul-07 - 12:48 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: 'There was a little girl who had a ...'
Subject: ADD: There was a little girl (H.W. Longfellow)
Blame H. W. Longfellow for this one. He wrote it.

THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL
(H.W. Longfellow)

There was a little girl,
And she had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.

One day she went upstairs,
When her parents, unawares,
In the kitchen were occupied with meals
And she stood upon her head
In her little trundle-bed,
And then began hooraying with her heels.

Her mother heard the noise,
And she thought it was the boys
A-playing at a combat in the attic;
But when she climbed the stair,
And found Jemima there,
She took and she did spank her most emphatic.

A very good collection of these rhymes is:
Carolyn Wells, Collector, 1902, "A Nonsense Anthology," Charles Scribner's Sons, NY.
I believe there are several reprints of this fine little book.