Granny Discovers Another Tiger

That's him!! The authentic, identical beast!
The Unionist tiger, full brother to 'Sosh'!
I know by the prowl of him.
Hark to the growl of him,
While all the people ejaculate 'Gosh!
Just look at him glarin' an' starin', by thunder!
Now each for himself and the weakest goes under.'


Beware this injurious, furious brute;
He's ready to rend you with tooth and with claw.
Though 'tis incredible,
Anything edible
Disappears suddenly into his maw;
Into his cavernous inner interior
Vanishes ev'rything strictly superior.


My dears, I've autoptical, optical proof
That he's prowling and growling at large in the land.
Hear his pestiferous
Clamor vociferous
Urging to war his belligerent band!
Talk about Circe and - who's this - Ulysses!
Never was monster so monstrous as this is.


I've watched this abdomenous, omnious shape
Abroad in the land while the nation has slept,
Marked his satanical
Methods tyrannical;
Rigorous, vigorous vigil I kept.
He has wicked designs on all right-thinking people!
Proclaim it aloud from the housetop and steeple!


He lays his corrodible, odible plans
While cutely disguising his ultimate claims.
Into your auricle
Words oratorical
He will declaim with ulterior aims.
And if as a foe he should happen to spot us,
One gulp - and his great epiglottis has got us!


The tremulous, emulous workers he snares
By most reprehensible, tensible schemes.
Slyly insidious,
Vilely invidious
Are his designs to encourage their dreams.
But watch, when they're under his dominant digit,
His finical, cynical smile as they fidget.


The shockingly punitive, unitive means
He uses to battle with enterprise private
Are indefensible
Quite reprehensible.
Lord only knows what at last he'll arrive at!
And when he has swallowed the whole of the nation
He'll probably start on self-assimilation.


He scoffs at convenient, lenient laws
He'd scoff every toff in the House known as Upper
If he'd a precedent;
Every resident
In the best suburb would serve him for supper.
Good gravious, voracious is hardly the name for it!
Yet we have only our blindness to blame for it.


For mark, his insidious, hideous creed
He propagates even 'mid grocers and drapers,
And they give ear to it,
Bow, and adhere to it,
'Spite all the capers of well-informed papers.
For e'en with the aid of an lens omphaloptic
They can't see the glare in his obdurate optic.


Then 'ware this obstreperous, leperous beast!
A treacherous wretch, for I know him of old.
I'm on th etrack of him,
Close at the back of him,
Tight on his tail I have taken a hold.
And if I gave over my earnest endeavor,
The nation were lodged in his larynx for ever.


It's him!! The authentic, identical beast!
I know him 'The Unionist,' brother to 'Sosh'!
See how I'm holding him,
Nagging and scolding him,
While he is yearning his betters to squash;
Yearning and burning to snare the superior
Into his roomy and gloomy interior

A Ballad For Elderly Kids

Now this is the ballad of Jeremy Jones,
And likewise of Bobadil Brown,
Of the Snooks and the Snaggers and Macs and Malones,
And Diggle and Daggle and Down.
In fact, 'tis a song of a fatuous throng.
Which embraces 'the man in the street,'
And the bloke on the 'bus, and a crowd more of us.
And a lot of the people we meet.

Yes, this is the story of Jack and of Jill,
Whose surnames are Snawley or Smith,
And of Public Opinion and National Will,
And samples of Popular Myth.
For Jeremy Jones, as a very small boy,
Was encouraged to struggle for pelf,
And to strive very hard in his own little yard,
But never to think for himself.

Then, Hi-diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
Come, sing us a nursery rhyme.
For, in spite of our whiskers, we elderly friskers
Are kiddes the most of our time.
So this is the song of the juvenile throng,
And its aunts and its big brother Bill,
Its uncles and cousins, and sisters in dozens,
Louisa and 'Liza and Lill.

Now, Jeremy Jones was exceedingly 'loyal,'
And when any procession went by,
He'd cheer very loud with the rest of the crowd,
Though he honestly couldn't tell why.
He was taught that his 'rulers' toiled hard for his sake,
And promoted the 'general good';
That to meddle with 'customs' was quite a mistake.
And Jones didn't see why he should.

To gird at the 'Order of Things as they Are,'
He was told, was the act of a fool.
He was taught, in effect, to regard with respect
Ev'ry' 'Precedent,' 'Practice' and 'Rule.'
And if we deserted the 'Usual Plan'
He believed that the nation would fall.
So Jones became known as a 'right-thinking man,'
Which meant that he didn't at all.

Oh, Little Miss Muffett, she sat on a tuffet,
But fled from a spider in fright;
For no one haa told her that if she was bolder,
She might have asserted her right.
Ho, rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub,
On a sea of political doubt;
And they argue together concerning the weather,
But never attempt to get out.

They made him a grocer when Jerry left school,
And a very good grocer was he;
And a dunce he was not, for he knew quite a lot
Of such matters as treacle and tea.
But the making of nations, and things so immense,
He considered beyond his control.
He was busy on week-days at saving his pence,
And on Sundays at saving his soul.

But politics Jones did not wholly neglect!
He subscribed to a paper, THE SAGE;
And every morn, with becoming respect,
He scanned its political page.
He believed what was said in each leader he read,
For a 'right-thinking person' was he.
Who was shocked at their vices, who growled of the prices
Of Sugar or treacle or tea.

Oh, Little Jack Horner sits in a corner,
A look of delight in his eye,
At the sight of a plum on the end of his thumb,
While there's somebody sneaking his pie.
Then, ride a cook hoss to Banbury Cross
Though the Lord only knows why we do.
But there's precedent for it, and those who ignore it
We class as an ignorant crew,

So Jeremy Jones he meanders through life,
Behaving as Grandmother bids;
And so do his very respectable wife
And extremely conventional kids.
Their bosses can trust 'em, for habit and custom
They've learnt in the regular school;
And they call him 'right-thinking,' while privately winking
And setting him down as a fool.

Convention's his master; he vows that disaster
Will swiftly encompass its foes.
He thinks Evolution a Labor delusion,
And 'Progress' a 'something' that grows.
He's one of the many - a credulous zany
The leadable, bleedable type
Who looks upon 'Time' - instructed by Granny
As something that rarely is ripe.

Oh, Goosey, goose gander, where do you wander?
Only, kind sir, where I'm told;
For my master has said I must go where I'm led,
And to contradict him would be bold.
And Little Bo-peep she lost her sheep.
It's the Socialist's fault, she'll insist.
But leave her to grieve, for she'll never believe
That a Meat Trust could ever exist.

Then this is the ballad of elderly kids,
Of Jeremy Jones and his kind,
Of Bobadil Brown, and Daggle and Down,
And the crowd with the juvenile mind.
Oh, this is a song of the National Will,
Of the Snooks, and the Snaggers, and Smiths,
Their aunts and their cousins, and big brother Bill,
Convention and Popular Myths.

A sad little song of the fatuous throng,
A string of sedate little rhymes,
Concerning the crowd who consider it wrong
To collide with the 'trend of the times.'
A song about Us, who are missing the 'bus,
While we trifle and toy with pretence.
For we play very hard in our own little yard,
But we seldom look over the fence.

Then Hi-diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle
We're never concerned with the cause.
Let's giggle and sinf for the Trust and the Ring
Are really our old Santa Claus.
Effects may surprise us, but Granny'll advise us;
We'll never behave as she bids.
Ho, grocers and drapres, let's stick to the papers;
We're all of us elderly kids.