Nursery Rhyme. CCCCLXXVIII. Love And Matrimony.

    Did you see my wife, did you see, did you see,
        Did you see my wife looking for me?
    She wears a straw bonnet, with white ribbands on it,
        And dimity petticoats over her knee.

    On Saturday night,
    Shall be all my care
    To powder my locks
    And curl my hair.

    On Sunday morning
    My love will come in,
    When he will marry me
    With a gold ring.

    It's once I courted as pretty a lass,
    As ever your eyes did see;
    But now she's come to such a pass,
    She never will do for me.
    She invited me to her own house,
    Where oft I'd been before,
    And she tumbled me into the hog-tub,
    And I'll never go there any more.

    There was a little boy and a little girl
    Lived in an alley;
    Says the little boy to the little girl,
    "Shall I, oh! shall I?"

    Says the little girl to the little boy,
    "What shall we do?"
    Says the little boy to the little girl,
    "I will kiss you."

    There was a little pretty lad,
        And he lived by himself,
    And all the meat he got
        He put upon a shelf.

    The rats and the mice
        Did lead him such a life,
    That he went to Ireland
        To get himself a wife.

    The lanes they were so broad,
        And the fields they were so narrow,
    He couldn't get his wife home
        Without a wheelbarrow.

    The wheelbarrow broke,
        My wife she got a kick,
    The deuce take the wheelbarrow,
        That spared my wife's neck.

            I am a pretty wench,
            And I come a great way hence,
    And sweethearts I can get none:
            But every dirty sow,
            Can get sweethearts enow,
    And I, pretty wench, can get never a one.