Puddock, Mousie, and Ratton

     There lived a Puddock in a well,
     And a merry Mousie in a mill.

     Puddock he would a-wooing rid
     Sword and pistol by his side.

     Puddock came to the Mousie’s inn,
     “Mistress Mousie, are you within?”

       MOUSIE.

     “Yes, kind Sir, I am within,
     Softly do I sit and spin.”

       PUDDOCK.

     “Madam, I am come to woo,
     Marriage I must have of you.”

       MOUSIE.

     “Marriage I will grant you none
     Till Uncle Ratton he comes home.”

       PUDDOCK.

     “See, Uncle Ratton’s now come in
     Then go and bask the bride within.”

     Who is it that sits next the wall
     But Lady Mousie both slim and small?

     Who is it that sits next the bride
     But Lord Puddock with yellow side?

     But soon came Duckie and with her Sir Drake;
     Duckie takes Puddock and makes him squeak.

     Then came in the old carl cat
     With a fiddle on his back: 
     “Do ye any music lack?”

     Puddock he swam down the brook,
     Sir Drake he catched him in his fluke.

     The cat he pulled Lord Ratton down,
     The kittens they did claw his crown.

     But Lady Mousie, so slim and small,
     Crept into a hole beneath the wall;
     “Squeak,” quoth she, “I’m out of it all.”

The Little Bull-Calf

Centuries of years ago, when almost all this part of the country was wilderness, there was a little boy, who lived in a poor bit of property and his father gave him a little bull-calf, and with it he gave him everything he wanted for it.

But soon after his father died, and his mother got married again to a man that turned out to be a very vicious step-father, who couldn’t abide the little boy.  So at last the step-father said:  “If you bring that bull-calf into this house, I’ll kill it.”  What a villain he was, wasn’t he?

Now this little boy used to go out and feed his bull-calf every day with barley bread, and when he did so this time, an old man came up to him—­we can guess who that was, eh?—­and said to him:  “You and your bull-calf had better go away and seek your fortune.”

So he went on and he went on and he went on, as far as I could tell you till to-morrow night, and he went up to a farmhouse and begged a crust of bread, and when he got back he broke it in two and gave half of it to the bull-calf.  And he went to another house and begged a bit of cheese crud, and when he went back he wanted to give half of it to the bull-calf.  “No,” says the bull-calf, “I’m going across the field, into the wild-wood wilderness country, where there’ll be tigers, leopards, wolves, monkeys, and a fiery dragon, and I’ll kill them all except the fiery dragon, and he’ll kill me.”