Friday phrases: don’t take your wife to arctic tundra

Back in the dim and distant past of my own primary school days, there was a certain amount of learning poems by heart.

Not as much as in my parents’ generation, or before that, I’m sure, but certainly some.

A certain category of poetry learning found in Scottish primary schools, learning Scots poems in order to recite them in school assembly on Burns Night. I might just bring you some another time.

I do still remember the bulk of the poems I learned there. But I also remember my well-thumbed copy of the Lion Book of Humorous Verse, which I thus came to memorise (at least in part) through frequent rereading.

So it is that I present you one of my favourites from that time. I particularly love the rhyme in the last line.

I can’t get you a link to the poem itself, this time, but you can find out more about the fascinating author, Hilaire Belloc, who wrote many a good satirical poem that children in particular enjoy.

Bon appetit!

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The Walrus

“The walrus lives on icy floes

And unsuspecting Eskimos

Don’t take your wife to arctic tundra

A walrus may bob up from undra.”

Hilaire Belloc

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