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.
About this rhyme
Confirmed: Green Gravel is a well-documented English singing game (earliest recorded version 1835, catalogued by the Opies in The Singing Game) in which children join hands and walk round in a ring. 'Intery, Mintery, Cutery Corn' is a genuine, long-recorded (from at least the early 19th century) counting-out rhyme used to select who is 'it' in a game.
This one is really two rhymes side by side. 'Around the Green Gravel' was a ring game, sung while children walked in a circle. 'Intery, Mintery' that follows is a counting-out rhyme, the kind used to pick who goes first in a game, chanted while pointing round the group one word at a time.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition