My mother, b 1909, remembered from her childhood, as a recitation, not in verse, the following, which she so often repeated to me in my 1930s childhood that I recall it to this day:

One fine day in the middle of the night, the sea caught fire.
The blind man saw it, the deaf man heard it, the man with no legs ran for the engine.
It came along drawn by two dead horses, ran over a dead cat and half killed it.
My next song will be a dance, told to you by a female gentleman, sitting at the corner of a big round table, barefooted with his father's boots on, eating his soup with a fork.

~M~