I grin grimly as such gremlin typos manifest themselves when it is too late. I did my best, I whisper plaintively...

"An Old Rat's tale" was one of the few US poems to become standard in the UK and then the Colonies, and get into textbooks which lingered on in he ex-Colonies (which is how we came to it). presemably because Richards's sensibilities, her taste for the faux-antique/quaint/whimsical/Learlike-nonsensical/Potterlike-anthropomorphised animal etc. accorded seamlessly with Englishy ones... You will find on the worldwideweb the nice (American-ish?) (folklike?) memory-substitution of "as black as a witches' hat" for "your Sunday hat"... An American academic said on a listserv a decade or so ago, when I spoke of it there, that it was a parody of Poe's "Annabel Lee", because of the first line, but I cannot decide.

We too did "Lord Ullin's Daughter" ni school, about which, in university, a teacher said, "Well, yes: it does have a certain cheap Romantic appeal". very kindof him. E Nesbit's Dicky has a parody of its lines: "Come back, come back!"/he cried in Greek/Across this stormywater/And I'll forgive your Highland cheek,/My daughter, oh my daughter!"

But SURELY, with all the international scholarly expertise on this form about finding things in songbooks, SOMEBODY knows how to find a reprint of "An Old Rat's Tale" from a collection in which it is not presented as a part-song??? It is most likely by the same composer as the part-song. There were other good things in that songbook, too. I kick myself not taking down the bibl. details when I saw it. Do spread the word on the search.

Sanjay Sircar