Two short songs run together: a bachelor's disastrous trip to fetch a wife home in a wheelbarrow, and a snippet about a cat making off with the pudding-string. The tumble in the first half is played for laughs, not harm.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
When I was a bachelor
I lived by myself;
And all the bread and cheese I got
I laid up on the shelf.
The rats and the mice
They made such a strife,
I was forced to go to London
To buy me a wife.
The streets were so bad,
And the lanes were so narrow,
I was forced to bring my wife home
In a wheelbarrow.
The wheelbarrow broke,
And my wife had a fall;
Down came wheelbarrow,
Little wife and all.
SING, SING
Sing, sing, what shall I sing?
Cat's run away with the pudding-string!
Do, do, what shall I do?
The cat has bitten it quite in two.
About this rhyme
A bachelor's comic complaint: living alone, keeping bread and cheese on a shelf, and losing the battle against rats and mice until he heads off to London for a wife. It's a small story told at a trot, one plain event after another.
The rhyme carries the humour, so keep the pace brisk when you read it.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition