MUSES: Nursery Rhymes

10 June 2007 topic: Write a piece in a particular literary form.

Nursery rhymes are a form of oral storytelling and can be educational, whimsical, or historical. Some of them have secret meanings or subversive messages; a kind of oral political cartoon.They are usually in the form of a rhyming couplet or short verse and they are a primary example of accentual verse, having a fixed number of accents per line, but with a varying number of syllables.


Georgie

Georgie had a cowboy hat.
Georgie had fine boots.
Georgie had a shiny pistol,
One that really shoots.

When the bad guys crashed the town,
George had but one tho't.
He dug himself into a hole
And shot, shot, shot.


Pieman

Once a pieman came to town.
His pies were fresh and sweet.
They quickly sold and so he told,
His voice soft and discreet,

"Pay me now; tomorrow I will
Bring more pies to town."
But next day there was no pieman;
We all had been done down.