#204-365 Nursery Rhymes

Thanks Julie for the opportunity of telling you of my favourite Nursery Rhyme; "The Man in the Moon Stayed up too Late": from the book Farmer Giles of Ham, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Don't run away - Read It - Out Loud is Best - then Read it to your grandchildren!

The Man in the Moon Stayed up too Late!

There was an old Inn, a merry old Inn, beneath an old grey hill;
Where they brew a beer so brown, that the Man in the Moon himself came down,
One night, to drink his fill.

The ostler has a tipsy cat, that plays a five string fiddle;
And up and down he saws his bow, now squeaking high, now purring low,
now sawing in the middle.

The Landlord keeps a little dog, that is mighty fond of jokes;
When there's good cheer among the guests, he cocks an ear at all the jests,
and laughs until he chokes.

They also keep a horned cow, as proud as any Queen;
But music turns her head like ale, and makes her wave her tufted tail,
and dance upon the green.

And O! the rows of silver dishes, and the store of silver spoons!;
For Sunday there's a Special Pair, and these they polish up with care,
on Saturday afternoons.

The Man in the Moon was drinking deep, and the cat began to wail;
a dish and a spoon on the table danced, the cow in the garden madly pranced,
and the little dog chased his tail.

The Man in the Moon took another mug, and then rolled beneath his chair;
and there he dozed and dreamed of ale, while in the sky the stars were pale,
and Dawn was in the air.

Then the Ostler said to his tipsy cat, 'the white horses of the moon;
They neigh and champ their silver bits, but their master's been and drowned his wits,
and the Sun'll be rising soon.

So the cat on the Fiddle played Hey-Diddle-Diddle, a jig that would wake the dead;
He squeaked and sawed and quickened the tune, while the Landlord shook the Man in the Moon,
It's after 3 he said.

They rolled the Man slowly up the hill, and bundled him into the Moon;
while his horses galloped up in rear, and the cow came capering like a deer,
and a dish ran up with a spoon.

Now quicker the fiddle went Deedle-Dum-Diddle, the og began to roar;
The cow and the horses stood on their head, the guests all bundled from their beds,
and danced upon the floor.

With a ping and a pong the fiddle strings broke! The cow jumped over the Moon!
and the little dog laughed to see such fun, and the Saturday Dish went of at a run,
with the silver Sunday spoon.

The round Moon rolled behind the hill, as the Sun raised up her head;
She hardly believed her fiery eyes, as though it was day -to her surprise,
they all went back to bed!

This was a labour of love in that I could not cut and paste the poem, blogger could not handle it and it even froze out Firefox , but here it is at last. I ended up with a PSD file in PSE having 30 layers to get this ?photo? composed all from shots that I have taken myself throughout the year, you may recognize Tibrogagen as the Hill, and I apologize for not having a team of white horses shown, I just never saw any. Also I played and played with the spoons and the dishes but couldn't get them to look good, so they must have run back into the Inn. Don't you think it was clever of my cat Snow to learn to play a five string fiddle just to be in the shot? I love the poem and hope you do too, and doing this was a big headache but oh so much fun!