A short Shrove Tuesday rhyme built around tossing something into the air on each line, originally a pancake, here a ball. It plays as much as it's spoken, and the opening 'Great A, little a' doubles as an early letter game.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Great A, little a,
This is pancake day;
Toss the ball high,
Throw the ball low,
Those that come after
May sing heigh-ho!
About this rhyme
Shrove Tuesday falls the day before Ash Wednesday, which begins Lent; Shrovetide ball games/football and pancake races are documented British traditions.
Pancake Day is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, and it's still marked in Britain today with pancakes and, in some towns, actual pancake races. This little rhyme belongs to the old custom of playing ball games on the day, tossing high and throwing low the way you'd flip a pancake in a pan.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition