Nursery Rhyme. DLX. Natural History.

    Snail, snail, shut out your horns;
        Father and mother are dead:
    Brother and sister are in the back yard,
        Begging for barley bread.

        [A Dorsetshire version.]

    'Twas the twenty-ninth of May, 'twas a holiday,
    Four and twenty tailors set out to hunt a snail;
    The snail put forth his horns, and roared like a bull,
    Away ran the tailors, and catch the snail who wull.

            Shoe the colt,
            Shoe the colt,
    Shoe the wild mare,
            Here a nail,
            There a nail,
    Yet she goes bare.

    Croak! said the Toad, I'm hungry, I think,
    To-day I've had nothing to eat or to drink,
    I'll crawl to a garden and jump through the pales,
    And there I'll dine nicely on slugs and on snails;
    Ho, ho! quoth the Frog, is that what you mean?
    Then I'll hop away to the next meadow stream,
    There I will drink, and eat worms and slugs too,
    And then I shall have a good dinner like you.

    Goosy, goosy, gander,
    Who stands yonder?
    Little Betsy Baker;
    Take her up, and shake her.

        Sneel, snaul,
    Robbers are coming to pull down your wall;
        Sneel, snaul,
        Put out your horn,
    Robbers are coming to steal your corn,
    Coming at four o'clock in the morn.