I’ve been wondering if the phrase “Red Herring” comes from today’s rhyme, “The Man in the Wilderness Asked Me”, or if it goes even farther back. Personally I had always thought it was a needle in the haystack kind of thing, really difficult but not impossible. Anyway the annotation says versions of this poem go back to the 17th century so who knows.
It’s interesting that while it’s traditional to dress up animals in clothes in these poems, today’s rhyme, Pussy Cat Mole Jumped Over a Coal, is the first one I’ve come across where it’s mandatory. Not getting into my inability to draw one without a reference, cats look ridiculous in petticoats.
Incidentally, according to the annotation, in this case “mole” is an obsolete onomatopoeia for “meow”.
Today’s rhyme, A Man Went Hunting in Reigate, is the first limerick I’ve done in this challenge and certainly one of the more entertaining ones. Once again the biggest challenge was looking up the correct way to hold a rifle… I also entertained myself pretending this was a a return of the “One Eyed Gunner” from day 2
I wasn’t particularly inspired by today’s rhyme “ Rock a Cradle Empty” except for finding some whimsy in the politics of marriage that probably never occurred to whoever wrote this.
It just occurred to me how grammar changes over time and was my guess that “Rock a cradle empty” meant rock an empty cradle correct, or… rock a cradle until it is empty.
The real Ariane (or at least her lazy artist) shared this cool piece of work showing exactly what she thinks of poor Olive providing Brian’s security… In other words exactly what she fears… (well probably not quite, since Rowan didn’t tell her who “she” is.)
Ariana Eldar: Poor-poor Olive. So much for that bodyguard-shoggoth-poo
I don’t have much to say about today’s rhyme, “The Old Man With Five Hens”, unless it was somehow a riddle since no matter how I looked at it there seemed to be more names than the stated number of chickens.
