‘Jack and Jill
Have studied Mill,
And all that sage has taught, too.
Now both promote
Jill’s claim to vote,
As every good girl ought too.’

“Even the pleasures of life have their duties, and the child needs to be instructed in the polite relaxation of society. The unmeaning jingle of ‘Hey diddle diddle,’ might be invested with some utility of a social kind:

‘I did an idyl on Joachim’s fiddle,
At a classical soiree in June,
While jolly dogs laughed at themes from Spöhr,
And longed for a popular tune.’

“And the importance of securing a good parti, of rejecting ineligible candidates, and of modifying flirtations by a strict regard to the future, might be impressed upon the female mind at an early age in the following moral:

‘Little Miss Muffit
Sat at a buffet
Eating a bonbon sucre;
A younger son spied her,
And edged up beside her,
But she properly frowned him away.’”

The preceding is all very well, but there are others which have been travestied and changed also—“Mary’s little Lamb,” for instance, will never be allowed to rest in its true Saxon garb, but is being constantly dressed in every tongue and dialect. But recently one has arisen bold enough to doubt the story altogether, and throw discredit on the song. Mr. Baring Gould, and iconoclasts like him, strive to show that William Tell and other ancient heroes never did live, but we never expected to doubt the existence of “Mary’s little Lamb,” yet a correspondent to a magazine sent not long ago what he says is the “true story of Mary and her lamb,” hoping it will take the place of the garbled version hitherto received as authentic:

“Mary had a little lamb,
Whose fleece was white as snow,
And every place that Mary went,
The lamb it would not go.
So Mary took that little lamb,
And beat it for a spell;
The family had it fried next day,
And it went very well.”

We have still another way of it, in what may be termed an exaggerated synonymic adherence to the central idea of the ballad:

“Mary possessed a diminutive sheep,
Whose external covering was as devoid of colour as the aqueous fluid which sometimes presents unsurmountable barriers on the Sierras.
And everywhere Mary peregrinated
This juvenile Southdown would be sure to get up and go right after her.
It followed her to the alphabet dispensary one day,
Which was contrary to the 243d subdivision of the 714th article of the constitution of that academy of erudition;
It caused the adolescent disciples there assembled to titillate their risibles and indulge in interludes of sportive hilarity,” &c. &c.

Linguistic renderings of many of these ancient songs may be found in the works of the Rev. Francis Mahoney (Father Prout), Dr. Maginn, &c., as well as in the “Arundines Cami” of the Rev. H. Drury. Of these here follow a few: