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.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition