Two rhymes share this entry: the mishap of two kittens and their mother tumbling off a collapsing bridge, and the well-known counting rhyme One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. The counting rhyme is the real workhorse here, a handy way to march through numbers to ten.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
The two gray kits,
And the gray kits' mother,
All went over
The bridge together.
The bridge broke down,
They all fell in;
"May the rats go with you,"
Says Tom Bolin.
ONE, TWO, BUCKLE MY SHOE
One, two,
Buckle my shoe;
Three, four,
Knock at the door;
Five, six,
Pick up sticks;
Seven, eight,
Lay them straight;
Nine, ten,
A good, fat hen;
Eleven, twelve,
Dig and delve;
Thirteen, fourteen,
Maids a-courting;
Fifteen, sixteen,
Maids in the kitchen;
Seventeen, eighteen,
Maids a-waiting;
Nineteen, twenty,
My plate's empty.
About this rhyme
Two kittens and their mother set off over a bridge together, and the bridge gives way under them. It's a small disaster played for comedy rather than sympathy, ending on a dry aside about rats rather than any rescue.
The joke is in the shrug of the last line, not the splash.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition