Thank you, Malcolm. Confession is good for the soul. It's just so odd to see something that was very definitely crafted as a Renaissance Faire in-joke crop up years later on a public forum! Most peculiar.

I went home last night and checked my bookshelf. Yes, I do still have the book, now without title page and almost completely unidentifiable. However it has a preface still in place with the editor's name at the end, together with the year of publication (1951). I can probably identify it from those.

Also, there is actually more than one verse -- two or three, much the same in character as the ones we wrote but not quite so silly. Tomorrow, when with luck I shall remember to bring the book with me to work, I promise to post the whole original lyric, together with whatever I can track down about the book.

Claire