I carried it to the mill upon the cat's back,
Sing ivy, &c.
Then follows some more which I forget, but I think it ends thus:
I made a cake for all the king's men,
Sing ivy, sing ivy.
I made a cake for all the king's men,
Sing green bush, holly, and ivy.
D.
Nursery Tale.— I saddled my sow with a sieve full of buttermilk, put my foot into the stirrup, and leaped nine miles beyond the moon into the land of temperance, where there was nothing but hammers and hatchets and candlesticks, and there lay bleeding Old Noles. I let him lie, and sent for Old Hippernoles, and asked him if he could grind green steel nine times finer than wheat flour. He said he could not. Gregory's wife was up in the pear-tree gathering nine corns of buttered peas to pay Saint James' rent. Saint James was in the meadow mowing oat cakes; he heard a noise, hung his scythe at his heels, stumbled at the battledore, tumbled over the barn-door ridge, and broke his shins against a bag of moonshine that stood behind the stairsfoot door, and if that isn't true you know as well as I.
D.