With a run and a squeal
Away went the pig with an odd little reel,
And the roly-poly pup and the kicking, kicking donkey followed after.
Halfway to the barn they met a fiddle lying near a bench. He was in such a bad temper that he had broken the string that makes the sweetest music. But the others were too full of their news to notice his ill humor.
“O fiddle diddle,” they cried, “what do you think we heard this very morning?”
“What?” snapped the fiddle, and he broke another string.
“A long time ago when pigs had wings
And pups grew in the tree-tops,
In that good time donkeys brayed in rhyme,
And fiddles danced the barn hops.”