The same paper, for May 23, 1885, contained another very funny parody of Rossetti; but unfortunately it was too suggestive to bear republication here.
It was reserved, however, for that prince of Parodists, Charles S. Calverley, to make the ballad with a refrain supremely ridiculous:—
The auld wife sat at her ivied door,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
A thing she had frequently done before;
And her spectacles lay on her apron’d knees.
The piper he piped on the hill-top high,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
Till the cow said “I die,” and the goose ask’d “Why?”
And the dog said nothing, but search’d for fleas.