A tidy little character sketch of a stingy old woman who hides away all her food rather than share it with visitors. It is a limerick in everything but name, with a punchline rhyme that lands hard and fast.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
There dwelt an old woman at Exeter;
When visitors came it sore vexed her,
So for fear they should eat,
She locked up all her meat,
This stingy old woman of Exeter.
About this rhyme
A comic sketch of a miser: an old woman in Exeter so put out by visitors that she locks up all her food rather than share it. It's one of a family of old rhymes that pin a joke on a real town.
Read the last line with a bit of scandal in your voice.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition