Four short rhymes bundled together: the Man in the Moon burning his mouth on porridge, a counting game about love, a bat invited in for bacon, and dogs barking at beggars coming to town. Each is brief enough to know by heart and different enough to keep a young listener guessing what comes next.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
The Man in the Moon came tumbling down,
And asked the way to Norwich;
He went by the south, and burnt his mouth
With eating cold pease porridge.
ONE, HE LOVES
One, he loves; two, he loves;
Three, he loves, they say;
Four, he loves with all his heart;
Five, he casts away.
Six, he loves; seven, she loves;
Eight, they both love.
Nine, he comes; ten, he tarries;
Eleven, he courts; twelve, he marries.
BAT, BAT
Bat, bat,
Come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon;
And when I bake
I'll give you a cake
If I am not mistaken.
HARK! HARK!
Hark, hark! the dogs do bark!
Beggars are coming to town:
Some in jags, and some in rags,
And some in velvet gown.
About this rhyme
The face people see in the moon is really its dark plains, and folk stories have named it for centuries. Often it is a man banished up there for gathering sticks on a Sunday, sometimes with a little dog beside him. This rhyme is lighter than any of that. The man simply falls to earth, asks the way to Norwich, and burns his mouth gulping down cold pease porridge, which is a thick pea soup. Old, and more silly than solemn.
No actions come built in, so make one. Point up for the moon, bring your hand tumbling down for the fall, then pull a face at the burnt mouth. Children like the idea of the moon dropping in and getting lost. A short one, handy at a night-time window, or beside a look at the real moon.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition