Little Bo-Peep
Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep, And doesn’t know where to find them; Let them alone, and they’ll come home, Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep. And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For still they all were fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook, Determined for to find them; She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed. For they’d left their tails behind them.
It happen’d one day, as Bo-peep did stray Under a meadow hard by, That she espied their tails, side by side, All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye, And over the hillocks went stump-o; And tried as she could, as a shepherdess should, To tack again each to its rump-o.
The ballad lacks sadly in particulars, to be sure. How the tails of the entire flock disappeared in one fell swoop—whether by malice aforethought, at the instance of a lurking enemy, or in a miraculous accident, whilst the young shepherdess slept at her charge—has never been told, though thousands of wondering pows, multiplied by ten, have wanted to know. Perhaps it is better not explained. Mystery is so often just another word for charm.
We will now have the curious tale of “The House that Jack Built.” In no sense a curious house, perhaps, but famous because of the fortuitous events which issued in regular sequence from the simple fact of the builder having stored a quantity of malt within its walls. It is told best with the accompaniment of pictorial illustrations, but here these are not available.