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unsicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
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Cautionary
Tales for Children, and other versesHilaire Belloc (1939; this edition: Folio Society, 1997)
160 pp. First reading.
Posted 27 April 2006.
This is a delightfully gruesome collection of poems about children
whose misbehaviour leads to their demise. Thus we meet Matilda, Who told Lies, and was
Burned to Death, and Rebecca,
Who slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably,
and so on. Belloc was a famous wag, and the poems are great
fun. They are composed mostly, but not entirely, in rhyming
couplets - even the footnotes, which appear from time to time, are
rhyming.
This volume contains not only the eponymous Cautionary Tales for Children,
but also The Bad
Child's Book of Beasts and More Beasts for Worse Children,
together comprising a kind of bad child's bestiary.
THE FROG
Be kind and gentle to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As 'Slimy skin', or 'Polly-wog',
Or likewise 'Ugly James',
Or 'Gap-a-grin', or 'Toad-gone-wrong',
Or 'Billy Bandy-knees':
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a Frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).
Be kind and gentle to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As 'Slimy skin', or 'Polly-wog',
Or likewise 'Ugly James',
Or 'Gap-a-grin', or 'Toad-gone-wrong',
Or 'Billy Bandy-knees':
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a Frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).
My edition of these poems is from the Folio Society, and is among the most handsome books in my personal library. It has obviously been designed and manufactured with great care. Merely to hold it is a pleasure. Althea bought it for me at a second-hand bookstore, for which I thank her.
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