worst rhyme ever

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 10:53 AM

WeeLittleDrummer observed:

well if Mary had lips like cherries, they would be little and round with a stone in the middle and a stalk sticking out

I suppose that may be so, WLD, but it still rhymes just fine!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 11:38 AM

Steve Benbow improves the rhyme in Green Green Grass of Home (Written originally by Curly Puttnam , by the way) By singing :-

Down the lane I walk with my sweet Mary
Like an ape but twice as hairy

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 11:59 AM

I love Cole Porter's rhmes and I love rhymes which are split over two lines.

Told me love was too plebian
told me you were through with me
and now you say you love me

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Dita
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 06:57 PM

My pet hate, rhyme as it might, is

Robin Laing's

The Forth Bridge Song

(about the builders of the bridge spanning the river Forth in Scotland).

"Busy beavers, building cantilevers"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 07:05 PM

Busy galoops, eating canteloupes?

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 09:08 PM

WHAT???? Steve Benbow has stolen my "Down the lane I walk with my sweet Mary,
built like an ape, but twice as hairy" line!!!

I guess great minds think alike, eh? ;-)

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: cobber
Date: 22 Jun 05 - 04:04 AM

There's a book in Australia called Australian Comic Verse that has poems by Pixie O'Harris (somebody told me she was Rolf Harris' mother but I don't know if that's true. The one that springs to mind, and this was the complete poem, was
I saw Chaucer
In a flying saucer
that's worse than Rolf's
Whatever I did they said was false
They said, "Quick march!" I did a quick waltz
(Jake the Peg)

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jun 05 - 06:39 PM

"wh" is pronounced just "w" in the south of England

By many people, even most for all I know, but so what? "Bottle" is pretty generally pronounced "bo'o'l" in the South of England for that matter...

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Dug
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 04:43 PM

Jack O'Hagan:

Our Don Bradman, I ask you is he any good?
Our Don Bradman, as a batsman he is certainly plum pud.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 05:12 PM

I agree that a lot of unexpected rhymes -- especially those made by carrying over a polysyllabic word from one line to the next -- are not only very good rhymes, but often quite clever.   I'm also a fan of the humorously contrived rhymes of Ogden Nash, Tom Lehrer, etc.   If they turn out to be bad puns, that's intended.

Neil Diamond, however, took a beautiful, serious ballad and stuck a nails-on-the-chalkboard, cringeworthy contrived -- and really unneeded -- rhyme in the middle of it by using bad grammar.   He wins the prize in my opinion.

Now Sting (Gordon Sumner) may also be a contender, if only for really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g to find a a kinda, sorta, quasi-, close-but-no-cigar rhyme in the song "Wrapped Around Your Finger:"

"You consider me a young apprentice
Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis."

Hmmm.   
Ho-Kay.

Genie

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,thurg
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 05:23 PM

Don't forget the great Cowardly Lion:

Dorothy: What would you do if you met an elephant?

Lion: I'd wrap him up in cellophant!

Tin Man: What if you met a rhinocerous?

Lion: Imposserous!

Scarecrow: What if you met a tyrannosaurous?

Lion: I'd show him who's king of the fores'!


And then there's:

Lion: Who put the ape in ape-ricot?
       What do they got that I ain't got?
       Courage!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 05:32 PM

The master of 'rhymes' which work by virtue of a colluding nod and wink at the author's slyness was Ian Dury. An old song of his "The Jam Jar Song" has a lot of my favourites. It starts:

I was bored in my Ford
But my sister had a Lincoln
A great big pink 'un.
Makes me feel so nifty
Goin' along at fifty

A Wolsey is coolsie
But a Lancia is fancier

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Cool Beans
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 05:35 PM

Science without any data
's like gazpacho without the tomata.
(From "Into the Light," short-lived Broadway musical, lyrics by the usually brilliant John Forster.)

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 05:36 PM

My all-time least favorite rhyme is from the Christmas song "Sleigh Ride"

Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "Yoo hoo!"
You know it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

How often do you call "Yoo hoo!"? I don't believe I ever have. Especially if it's freezing-ass cold outside. The whole idea disgusts me. In fact, that rhyme is a major reason why I'm such a Scrooge. I hate Christmas because I hate the idea of people calling "Yoo hoo!".

Now, if the lyricist had written

Outside the snow is falling and puppies are turning blue.

it would still be disgusting, but at least it'd be funny.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 05:38 PM

My fave, Tom Lehrer of course, is in the song about Smut! Give me smut and nothing but! A dirty novel I can't shut...
if it's uncut...
and uusubt-
tle

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,oldhippie
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 06:30 PM

"Better fly, butterfly, or
batter fry, butterfly"

- Nancy Tucker

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: pdq
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 07:01 PM

TV Western theme about a man named John Slaughter:

                Texas John Slaughter
                  Made 'em do what they oughter
                  For they didn't they'd die!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 07:45 PM

From one of my own songs, "The Puffin is a Funny Bird"

He takes off at a mighty run and flaps like mad to get airborne
So when he crashes back on land, he looks a little care-worn.

And later (referring to his diet of sand-eels):

Six,seven, eight, nine, ten or more, his beak is heavy laden,
It's even harder now to fly, when he is just so weighed-down.

And a newer song:

When I took them to market, 'twas just for a lark, it

And

I would dine like a princess
On best topside mince - yes

All done deliberately to provoke groans, of course!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 08:32 PM

Any of the several pieces of doggerel that rhyme "Christmas" with "isthmus"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Skivee
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 09:23 PM

The great Louis Armstrong dropped this stink bomb in "It's A Wonderful World":
I see friends shaking hands
Saying,"How do you do"?
They're really saying, "I love you"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: bobad
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 09:46 PM

Marten Hartwell Story
Stompin' Tom Connors

"Oh, Mr. Hartwell," said the nurse
"I [G7]pray that you will [C]guide us
To save this woman with her child
And the [G7]boy with appendi[C]citis."

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Genie
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 09:47 PM

Why is that a bad rhyme?   The lyric may be Hallmark-esque, but "do" and "you" seem like perfectly good rhymes to me.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Joe_F
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 10:04 PM

Better a parvenu
Living luxuriously on Park Arvenue
Than a Schuyler or Van Rensselaer
Living inexpensselaer. -- Ogden Nash

Forcing the reader to invent "inexpensivelier" just for the purpose of misrhyming it is a true masterpiece of prosodic impudence. One might also give honorable mention (in the nonrhotic division) to his rhyming "Junior" with "Pennsylvunia".

Any collection of *serious* bad rhymes should surely include Joe Hill's in "Union Maid":

Shall we still be slaves and work for wages?
It is outrageous --
Has been for ages.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Skivee
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 10:06 PM

It's not the rhyme, but the sickening sacharinitiod that gives me hives.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: darkriver
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 02:04 AM

Kudos to McGrath of Harlow for "most of the "terrible rhymes", like the Lehrer ones, are actually perfect rhymes, just a bit unexpected."

None of the rhymes given as examples are really "terrible"; mostly just unexpected, near, slant, or deliberately (perversely) forced.

Why? English is probably one of the most rhyme-poor of languages, and so the tradition of near or complex rhymes has established itself.

If it's truly bad rhymes you want, in the sense of a tin ear or incompetence or impatience (in working out a good fit), then you could not do better (or is it worse?) than America's own Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan (1847-1920). Whereas McGonigall's poems have a certain badness, he executes them with such great gusto and cheer. Mrs. Moore, on the other hand, became famous (or notorious) for her unending series of poems about dead infants and other morbid, "serious" topics.

You want a bad rhyme? Try Mrs. Moore's "Temperence Reform Clubs":
    Some enterprising people,
       In our cities and towns,
    Have gone to organizing clubs
       Of men that's fallen down.

Ogden Nash has acknowledged his debt to her; of her, as James Camp writes in Pegasus Descending:

few poets have so assiduously cultivated the line that rambles on for as long as necessary, nor produced more surpising rhymes. Given the first three lines of this quatrain, who could predict the way the fourth would end?
    Many a man joined a club
      That never drank a dram,
    These noble men were kind and brave,
      They do not care ------------.


...It goes, "They do not care for slang."
As the anonymous editor of a [reprint of one of her books]... has remarked, Mrs. Moore "not only conveys information, but she brings the mind up with a jerk. We look around quickly to see what made the noise, and feel instinctively for our money and our watch."

Doug

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: alison
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 03:00 AM

Bread (I think)
"you sheltered me from harm, kept me warm,"

another vote for "songs she brang to me"

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: webfolk
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 03:58 AM

He wrote a note it said, 'give us a job son!'
Sent it off to Bobby Robson
But he finally had to admit defeat

From 'Howay the Lads' by Geoff Rodgers

Geoff (Rodgers)

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 04:16 AM

My current favorite rhyme is from Mr. Mitch benn, who did "Hamlet" in the style of Eminem:

"Christopher Marlowe, you'd better stay outa my way.
I drop bombs when I write my plays, bitch
using my skillz and my talent with grammar ta
kick your ass in iambic pentameter"

Point to Mr. Benn for rhyming with "Iambic Pentameter".

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 05:20 AM

Not sure about worst, but the most forced ever....

I've never seen a jaguar,
Nor yet an Armadill-
o dilloing in his armour,
and I s'pose I never will

Peter Bellemy singing Kipling.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 05:48 AM

From a traditional Song from the Unionist tradition in Norn Irn.

He had not turned himself aroond
When he received a deadly wound
His Heels went up, and his head went doon
At the July fair in Garvah.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 06:13 AM

Two cringers from the traditional song 'Banks of the sweet Dundee'

'and she did fire
and shot the Squire
on the banks of the sweet Dundee,.

and........

'the trigger she drew
and her uncle slew
on the banks of the sweet Dundee'.

nice song though!

Andy

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,redhorse at work
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 08:08 AM

" I close my eyes for a minute and pretend it's me you want.
Meantime I try to act so nonchalant"

Or the classic limerick
"There was an old man of Boulogne
Who sang a most topical song.
It wasn't the words
That frightened the birds
But the terrible double entendre"

nick

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bob Hitchcock
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:31 AM

One of my favorites is from "Half a Man" by the Austin Lounge Lizards and goes:-

I buy a tenth of Whiskey,
And a cold three pack of beer.
I drink till I see single,
When I look into the mirror.

I guess if you're from Texas, beer and mirror is a perfectly good rhyme.

Bob

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:39 AM

That's got a long pedigree, Bob

"Each day I look into my mirror
As usual
And tell myself that you're still here
As usual"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 12:45 PM

How about

See the tree how big it's grown
but friends it hasn't been to long it wasn't big
I laughed at her and she got mad
the first day that she planted it was just a twig

Bobby Goldsboro "Honey"

I know it rhymes but it is such a stupid line from such a stupid song that I think it fits the theme.

Sorry to anyone who goes around singing it in their head for the rest of the day.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 02:05 PM

what a good job we don't write songs with silly rhymes!

I think I'll stick to blank verse.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 07:48 PM

My stories they are blank,
but my poems, they are verse.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Ref
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 08:07 PM

Thanks to Yorkshire Yankee! That Chris Williamson line (Warrior/Bore YA) is THE worst rhyme in folk music, both linguistically and in terms of context (an otherwise great and serious song.) For years we've been replacing it with "Come to your life like a lover/Soon you'll discover/ You can be happy."

Chris was featured at Old Songs this year.   As I wandered about Saturday afternoon, I saw her approaching, alone, on the same path. I thought about bringing it up with her, but she didn't look like a relaxed, happy person and I chickened out, not wanting to risk anything unpleasant for either of us.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 08:14 PM

*sigh*...beer & mirror

I KNOW folks who say 'meer'...

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:08 PM

priceless...

I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain--Whoa!
ttr

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Severn
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 09:10 PM

Post one Hunderd, he thundered!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Joe_F
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 10:13 PM

A triple play:

A young lady who lived near the Bosporus
Was seduced by a red-eyed rhinoceros.
Said she, with a shriek,
"His horn is unique
And leaves mere men looking preposterous."

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: freightdawg
Date: 14 Sep 06 - 11:18 PM

Another forced rhyme, but actually one of my all time favorites:

"Roses are red, and violets are purple,
sugar is sweet and so is maple syrple;
I'm the seventh out of seven sons,
My pappy was a pistol,
I'm a 'son of a gun'

I said dang me, dang me;
they oughta take a rope and hang me,
High from the highest tree--
Woman would you weep for me.

A rip pip pip a baa do baa bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbttttt

Roger Miller, a classic of American singers, "Dang Me"

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,marie
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:27 AM

Then there's this gem from "Take the Money and Run" bu the steve Miller band:

"Billy Mac is a detective down in Texas
Don't 'cha know, he knows exactly what the facts is"

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:30 AM

With the exception of Bobby Goldsboro and Neil Diamond I have enjoyed everyone of these rhymes, well, maybe Bread too.

These by Dave Carter are my favorites and they are brilliant.


Professor come to burst my bubble,

says that girl is bound for trouble

Serves me solace in a paper cup

But it looks a bit like agent orange

and when he leaves he slams the door and Just

about that time she phones me up

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 03:42 AM

Tom Lehrer

Rhymes Discovered (pronounced discovaaaaaaaared) with Havard in the song of the Elements.

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Geordie-Peorgie
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 09:13 AM

A lady pal o' mine wrote a song caalled "Hell" where she rhymes

Satan was an angel but now he's diabolical
He pulls out your hair follicle by follicle"

The rest of the song doesn't match the hilarity of that though!!!

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 10:53 AM

You talked about your past and future, honey.
And the kind of guy that you thought would suit you, honey.

(You Never Talked AboutMe, Del Shannon)

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Big Mick
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 11:01 AM

I don't know about worst, but anyone who can rhyme tuberculosis is aces in my book. This is from Damien Dempsey's "Ghost of Overdoses". This person is ground floor and dynamite, in my book. Thanks to Andrew Harkin, the phenomenal NYC bass player, formerly of The Prodigals and now with Seanchai and the Unity Squad, for calling my attention to him:

here was pills, there was tabs
There was pain and needle jabs
And the ghosts overdoses
Replace the ghosts of tuberculosis


All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: worst rhyme ever
From: Snuffy
Date: 15 Sep 06 - 12:19 PM

Here's a deliberately painful one from Trevor Crozier's When The Piddletrenthide Jug Band Hit The Charts

Play your cows our Rhythm n Blues: you'll
Get three times more milk than usual