Nursery Rhyme. XCII. Proverbs.

            In July,
    Some reap rye;
            In August,
    If one will not the other must.

        [One version of the following song, which I believe to be the genuine one, is written on the last leaf of MS. Harl. 6580, between the lines of a fragment of an old charter, originally used for binding the book, in a hand of the end of the seventeenth century, but unfortunately it is scarcely adapted for the "ears polite" of modern days.]

    A man of words and not of deeds,
    Is like a garden full of weeds;
    And when the weeds begin to grow,
    It's like a garden full of snow;
    And when the snow begins to fall,
    It's like a bird upon the wall;
    And when the bird away does fly,
    It's like an eagle in the sky;
    And when the sky begins to roar,
    It's like a lion at the door;
    And when the door begins to crack,
    It's like a stick across you...

        [An egg.]

    Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck,[*]
    With all his sinews round his neck;
    Forty doctors and forty wrights
    Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights!

        [Footnote *: A brook.]

    The Cock. Lock the dairy door,
                            Lock the dairy door!
    The Hen.    Chickle, chackle, chee,
                            I haven't got the key!

    If wishes were horses,
        Beggars would ride;
    If turnips were watches,
        I would wear one by my side.

    I had a little hen, the prettiest ever seen,
    She washed me the dishes, and kept the house clean:
    She went to the mill to fetch me some flour;
    She brought it home in less than an hour;
    She baked me my bread, she brew'd me my ale,
    She sat by the fire and told many a fine tale.