1. Hush-a-by, Baby,
In the verandah!
When the sun drops
Baby may wander.
When the hot weather comes
Baby will die-
With a fine pukka tomb
In the ce-me-te-ry.
2. I had a little husband
Who gave me all his pay.
I left him for Mussoorie,
A hundred miles away.
I dragged my little husband's name
Through heaps of social mire,
And joined him in October,
As good as you'd desire.
3. 'Ba-Ba-Babu, have you got your will?'
'Yes Sar, Yes Sar, thanks to the Bill.
Four-anna witnesses-plenty telling cram,
And bless the Barra-Lat-Sahib, who says how good I am.'
4. See-saw, Justice and Law,
The Raiyats shall have a new master.
And the Zemindar ain't allowed to distraint
Because they can't pay any faster.
5. Sing a Song of Sixpence,
Purchased by our lives
Decent English Gentlemen
Roasting with their wives.
In the plains of India
Where like flies they die.
Isn't that a wholesome risk
To get our living by?
The fever's in the Jungle,
The typhoid's in the tank,
And men may catch the cholera
Apart from social rank;
And Death is in the Garden,
A-waiting till we pass,
For the Krait is in the drain-pipe,
The Cobra in the grass!
6. With a lady flirt a little
'Tis manners so to do.
Of a lady speak but little
'Tis safest so to do.
7. Jack's own Jill goes up to the Hill
Of Murree or Chakrata.
Jack remains, and dies in the plains,
And Jill remarries soon after.
8. Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Where do your subalterns go?
For love is brief and the next 'relief'
Will scatter them all like snow.
(Rhyme 3. above was included in Echoes, but
not in the later collected editions.)
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