WILLS IN POETRY OR RHYME
The disposition of one’s worldly possessions by a testamentary document in poetry or rhyme, appears incongruous, yet there are numerous documents of this nature: a brief, but striking example of such, by an attorney named Smithers who resided in London, follows:
“As to all my wordly goods, now or to be in store,
I give them to my beloved wife, and hers forevermore.
I give all freely; I no limit fix;
This is my will, and she’s executrix.”
Will of Mother Hubbard’s Dog
“This wonderful dog
Was Dame Hubbard’s delight;
He could dance, he could sing,
He could read, he could write.
“She went to the druggist
To get him a pill;
And when she came back,
He was writing his will.
“So she gave him rich dainties
Whenever he fed;
And put up a monument
When he was dead.”
On Tremont Street, in the busy heart of Boston, is the beautiful little “burying ground,” called the “Granary”; Paul Revere, John Quincy Adams, John Hancock, and other distinguished citizens of New England rest here under trees which have shaded their graves for more than a century. There is also shown the visitor the grave of “Mother Goose,” the alleged author of the Mother Goose Rhymes. It may be iconoclastic to shatter a legend, but the truth is, the Mother Goose Rhymes had been jingling for a century and more before this good lady was born; it appears that in ancient times, the goose was a famous story-teller for children, and the Goose Melodies are an adaptation from the French. The monument in the “Granary” is erected to Mary Goose, wife of Isaac Goose; it would seem that her claim to fame rests entirely upon her recitation of the Hubbard Melodies to such an extent that her son-in-law, Thomas Fleet, who was a printer, issued a special edition for her.
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman, in the fourteenth century, thus made his will: