A playground ring rhyme about pretty maids washed with milk and dressed in silk, paired here with the counting rhyme 'Intery, Mintery'. Both belong to the old tradition of games children played in a circle, chanting as they went round. The nonsense words at the end make it fun to speed up.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Around the green gravel the grass grows green,
And all the pretty maids are plain to be seen;
Wash them with milk, and clothe them with silk,
And write their names with a pen and ink.
INTERY, MINTERY
Intery, mintery, cutery corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn;
Wire, brier, limber-lock,
Five geese in a flock,
Sit and sing by a spring,
O-u-t, and in again.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition