The following old favourite is well known:
"Dickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck one, the mouse ran down,
Dickory, dickory, dock."
"Whippence, whoppence,
Half a groat, want two-pence,
More kicks than half-pence."
A correspondent in the Dorset County Chronicle for last April said that many years ago a thoroughly Dorset rustic was heard singing to a little child the following curious conglomeration of nonsense verses, which seem to form a collection of counting-out rhymes in themselves:
"Oon, two, dree, vour,
Bells of Girt Toller (Great Toller),
Who can mëake pancëake
'Thout fat or vlour?"
"'Gargy, Pargy, how's yer wife?'
'Very bad upon my life.'
'Can she ait a bit o' pie?'
'Ees, sa well as you or I.'"[1]
"Zee zaw, Margery Daw,
Swold her bed an' laid in straw,
Wadden she a dirty slut,
Da zell her bed and lay in dirt?"
" 'Pon my life an' honner!
As I was gowine to Toller,
I met a pig a'thout a wig,
'Pon my life an' honner!"
VI. RIDDLES.
Very much akin to the tricks or catches before mentioned under "Rustic Rhymes" (ante), and often quite as amusing, are the riddles that children especially are so fond of asking each other, particularly those which contain a catch in themselves.
