A ladybird rhyme, asking after a wedding day before sending the little creature off on its wings. Light and quick, good for a finger walking across a small hand. Just as much at home in the garden as on the sofa.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Burnie bee, burnie bee,
Tell me when your wedding be?
If it be to-morrow day,
Take your wings and fly away.
About this rhyme
Confirmed: 'burnie bee' (also 'burny-bee') is a Norfolk dialect name for a ladybird, recorded by James Orchard Halliwell in Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1849), and this exact rhyme text is the standard version attached to that name.
'Burnie bee' is an old dialect name for a ladybird, recorded in Norfolk. The rhyme talks straight to it, teasing it about its 'wedding day', then sends it flying off, in the same spirit as 'Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home'. Say it outside, ladybird on a finger, and let it go on the last line.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition