poetry

[leonora jay]

I HAVE JUST READ VERSIONS OF A CHILDHOOD POEM ON VISITING THIS SITE. I learned a slightly different version 'at my mothers knee' (.It could even have been my grand mother's) which was told by me to my three girls and to their six offspring ,changing the 'girl' to 'boy' in the case of grandsons. PLEASE There once as a girl who would never say please ,not even if you went down on your knees. Put her arms on the table, would sit at her ease , and speak to her mother in words such as these; Pass me the butter, give me some peas, I want more potatoes , hand me the cheese So the fairies that very rude daughter to tease once blew her away on a powerful breeze, to a land where never her mother she sees. And there with the wasps and the ants and the bees she must stay in the woods till she learns to say please. I would love to know its true origin I

[kempie]

I cannot vouch that this is the original version but the poem appears in St. Nicholas Magazine (Vol. 2 No. 8 Page 471) issued June 1875 and titled "The Little Girl Who Would N't Say Please" by M.S.P.

St. Nicholas: Scribner's Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys

Whilst researching this I found reference to a picture book from 1910 titled "Little girl blue lives in the woods till she learns to say please" by Josephine Scribner Gates. It is interesting to note that she shares a surname with the publisher of St. Nicholas, Charles Scribner, but appears to be of no familial connection.