Back before I was married, I lived in Paisley (Scotland) with an English roommate; we got along like clotted cream and jam, and, among other things, we would recite the following verse in sync any time we heard someone say, “I see”. There are longer, more elaborate versions that have been around for over 50 years. The mutations make it hard to trace it to the original source, as it seems that each person, school class or generation tweaks it with their own twist.
One Fine Day
“I see,” said the blind man to the deaf man
One fine day in the middle of the night,
As two dead men got up to fight;
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came and shot those two dead boys.
If you don’t believe my tale is true,
Ask the blind man, he saw it too.
Do you have any favourite rhymes, verses or ditties that you’ve known for years?
Please share them in the comments below!
Illustration: “Relativity”, by M.C. Escher
Stephanie Huesler 
My Grandma taught me this one, encouraging me to recite it just as quickly as possible:
“Betty Botter bought some butter,
But she said, ‘This butter’s bitter!
If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter!’
So Better Botter bought a bit of better butter,
And it made her bitter batter better.”
I love such tongue twisters! Thanks for sharing it!
She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
A nonsense non-rhyme:
Thirty days hath Septober,
April, June and no wonder.
All the rest have peanut butter;
All except my dear grandmother.
She had a little red bicycle.
It’s mine now, coz I stole it.
I’ve never heard that one before! Thanks for sharing it! 🙂
Everyone thinks theirs is better. 😉
Thanks for sharing it!
I remember this one from my youth, somewhat like yours,, but I like mine better. LOL
One dark night in the middle of the day
Two dead boys came out to play
Back to back facing each other
They pulled out their swords and shot one another
If you don’t believe my story’s true
Ask the blind man he saw it too.
My favorite verse came from a Richard Scary book: “A case of the heebie jeebies arrived today, alack! I wish I knew who sent it, ’cause I’d like to send it back.”
I remember that, too! 🙂
My mother would say, “I see, said the blind man.” Now I know the source!
I wish I knew the original source; it goes back to the World War era at least. Now you can teach your kids or nieces/nephews the whole shebang. 😉
So they can roll their eyes at me like I did at my mom. 😀
Well, you know what they say: “Behind every successful man is a woman rolling her eyes”; I guess that can apply to being a successful mom, too. 😉
The only thing we know, for sure, is that we don’t know much of anything, now do we?
Ain’t that the truth!
Ain’t that the truth!
” I would like to swim against the stream of time:
I would like to erase the consequences of certain events
and restore an initial condition.
But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts
and each of these new facts brings with it its consequences;
so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out,
the further I move away from it;
though all my actions are bent on erasing the consequences of previous actions
and though I manage to achieve appreciable results in this erasure,
enough to open my heart to hopes of immediate relief,
I must,
however,
bear in mind that my every move to erase previous events
provokes a rain of new events,
which complicate the situation worse than before
and which I will then,
in their turn,
have to try to erase.
Therefore
I must calculate carefully every move
so as to achieve
the maximum of erasure
with the minimum of recomplication.”
By Italo Calvino
‘Se Una Notte DeInvierno Un Viaggiatore’
/ D’Invierno. In English: ‘If on a Winters’ Night a Traveler’
Thank you for sharing it!
“It was bright as day in the middle of the night when two dead boys got up to fight. Back-to-back they faced each other, drew their knives and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise, came and shot the two dead boys”
My father told me this version when i was a boy. He was a Special Agent with the FBI. He heard this version from the Chief of Police (Scotland Yard, London) who he worked with often while trying to stifle U.S. based money feed (all bank fraud) to the terrorist group IRA.
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