Traditional Rounds Translated from Basic English
to that English we clearly borrowed...

Comments by Sandra Dodd unless otherwise indicated

Three rodents with defective visual perception,
Three rodents with defective visual perception.

Visualize how they perambulate,
Visualize how they perambulate.

They all perambulated after the agriculturalist's spouse,
She severed their spinal columns with a kitchen utensil.

Have you ever seen such a spectacle in your existence,
As three rodents with defective visual perception?

Propel, propel, propel your craft
Placidly down the solution
Ecstatic, ecstatic, ecstatic, ecstatic,
Existence is but an illusion.



Those are singable, with difficulty. "Three Blind Mice" I found on an office humor site here, and the other I learned on a bus trip when I was a kid, in the 1960's. The best thing about them is that they show the simplicity of plain English words, and their poeticism. When people praise the King James Bible, it's not for its thees and thous, it's because it's in real based-on-Anglo-Saxon everyday English, and not tarted up with Latinisms and French borrowings.

In the first one above, it might've been funnier to use "a trio" instead of three but it would probably be unsingable. "Three" is English. And the pronouns and prepositions are English (she, with, your...).

In the second one, "craft" is an English word, but boat is older and would be plainer and unambiguous. "Down" is plain. A replacement phrase wouldn't be singable.


The English and Etymology pages might amuse you.