Another street cry set to rhyme, this one from a seller who wishes he never had to call his lambs for sale. Its repeated refrain gives children something to chime in on.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
If I'd as much money as I could tell,
I never would cry young lambs to sell;
Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell;
I never would cry young lambs to sell.
About this rhyme
The narrator states she would stop crying young lambs to sell if she had as much money as she could tell. · The rhyme repeats its street cry, 'young lambs to sell,' several times across four short lines.
This one is written in the voice of a street seller, crying her wares the way real hawkers once did. She says plainly that if she had the money, she'd never have to do it, and the rhyme just repeats her cry, over and over, the way a real call would carry down a street. Try it as a proper singsong shout, since that's exactly what it's mimicking.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition