Betty Botter is a tongue twister written by American author Carolyn Wells in her book "The Jingle Book" published in 1899. [1] It was originally titled The Butter Betty Bought. By the middle of the 20th century, it had become part of the Mother Goose collection of nursery rhymes. [2]
The construction is based on alliteration, using the repeated two-syllable pattern /'b__tə'b__tə'b__tə/ with a range of vowels in the first, stressed syllable. The difficulty is in clearly and consistently differentiating all the vowels from each other. Except for /ɔː/ (bought a), they are all short vowels:
When it was first published in "The Jingle Book" in 1899, it read: [3]
Betty Botta bought some butter;
“But,” said she, “this butter’s bitter!
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit o’ better butter
Will but make my batter better.”
Then she bought a bit o’ butter
Better than the bitter butter,
Made her bitter batter better.
So ’twas better Betty Botta
Bought a bit o’ better butter.— The Butter Betty Bought, The Jingle Book
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter
But the bit of butter Betty Botter bought was bitter
So Betty Botter bought a better bit of butter
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter
but the bit of butter was bitter so Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
to make the bit of bitter butter better.
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter but, she said, this butter's bitter; if I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. so she bought some better butter, and it made her bitter batter better. [4]
Betty Batta bought some butter, but she said "this butter's bitter if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter". So she bought some better butter, better than the bitter butter put it in her batter and the batter tasted better.
Source: [5]
Betty Botter bought some butter,
But Betty Botter found her butter bitter.
So Betty Botter bought some better butter.
A little bit of bitter butter didn't bother Betty.
But her better butter better not be bitter!
There was an animated version featured on the television channel PBS Kids, animated by Lynn Tomlinson. In this variation the rhyme is as follows:
Betty Botter bought some butter,
but the butter, it was bitter.
If she put it in her batter, it would make her batter bitter,
but a bit of better butter, that would make her batter better.
So, she bought a bit of butter, better than her bitter butter,
And she put it in her batter, and her batter was not bitter.
So, T'was better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.
Betty Botter bought some butter...
Betty Botter bought some butter but she said the butter was bitter if I put it in my batter, it would make my batter bitter but a bit of better butter would make my batter better So, Betty Botter bought some butter better than her bitter butter
and if I put it in my batter it would make my batter better.
Betty bought a bit of butter, but the bit of butter Betty bought was bitter. So Betty bought a better bit of butter, to make the bitter bit of butter better.
Betty bought a bit of butter, but she said this butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my bitter batter better.
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken word game. Additionally, they can be used as exercises to improve pronunciation and fluency. Some tongue twisters produce results that are humorous when they are mispronounced, while others simply rely on the confusion and mistakes of the speaker for their amusement value.
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.
Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels, if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. A common example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," in which the "p" sound is repeated.
"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" – which can be spelled a number of ways – is a children's counting-out rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag, or for selecting various other things. It is one of a large group of similar rhymes in which the child who is pointed to by the chanter on the last syllable is chosen. The rhyme has existed in various forms since well before 1820 and is common in many languages using similar-sounding nonsense syllables. Some versions use a racial epithet, which has made the rhyme controversial at times.
Tongan is an Austronesian language of the Polynesian branch native to the island nation of Tonga. It has around 187,000 speakers. It uses the word order verb–subject–object.
"London Bridge Is Falling Down" is a traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game, which is found in different versions all over the world. It deals with the dilapidation of London Bridge and attempts, realistic or fanciful, to repair it. It may date back to bridge-related rhymes and games of the Late Middle Ages, but the earliest records of the rhyme in English are from the 17th century. The lyrics were first printed in close to their modern form in the mid-18th century and became popular, particularly in Britain and the United States, during the 19th century.
"Ring a Ring o' Roses", "Ring a Ring o' Rosie", or "Ring Around the Rosie", is a nursery rhyme, folk song and playground singing game. Descriptions first emerge in the mid-19th century, but are reported as dating from decades before, and similar rhymes are known from across Europe, with various lyrics. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7925.
"Roses Are Red" is the name of a love poem and children's rhyme with Roud Folk Song Index number 19798. It has become a cliché for Valentine's Day, and has spawned multiple humorous and parodic variants.
A children's song may be a nursery rhyme set to music, a song that children invent and share among themselves or a modern creation intended for entertainment, use in the home or education. Although children's songs have been recorded and studied in some cultures more than others, they appear to be universal in human society.
"The Ryans and The Pittmans" is a popular Newfoundland folk song. It tells of the romantic entanglements of a sailor named Bob Pittman, and his desire to sail home to finally marry his "sweet Biddy". The song is also known as "We'll Rant and We'll Roar", after the first line of the chorus; however, this is also the name by which some foreign variants are known.
"Who Killed Cock Robin" is an English nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 494.
Hot Cross Buns was an English street cry, later perpetuated as a nursery rhyme and an aid in musical education. It refers to the spiced English confection known as a hot cross bun, which is associated with the end of Lent and is eaten on Good Friday in various countries. The song has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13029.
"There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" is a popular English language nursery rhyme, with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19132. Debates over its meaning and origin have largely centered on attempts to match the old woman with historical female figures who have had large families, although King George II (1683–1760) has also been proposed as the rhyme's subject.
A skipping rhyme, is a rhyme chanted by children while skipping. Such rhymes have been recorded in all cultures where skipping is played. Examples of English-language rhymes have been found going back to at least the 17th century. Like most folklore, skipping rhymes tend to be found in many different variations. The article includes those chants used by English-speaking children.
"I Love Little Pussy", alternatively called "I Love Little Kitty", is an English language nursery rhyme about a person who is kind to a pet cat. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 12824.
"Apple Pie ABC" is an old and enduring English alphabet rhyme for children which has gone through several variations since the 17th century.
'I Had a Little Nut Tree' is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 3749.The song mentions a visit by the daughter of the King of Spain to request nutmeg and a pear. James Orchard Halliwell suggested that the song commemorates the 1506 visit of the Queen regnant Joanna of Castile to the English court of her brother-in-law, Henry VII. However, the oldest known version of the song dates to 1797.
The Black Country dialect is spoken by many people in the Black Country, a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The traditional dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English and may be unintelligible for outsiders. This dialect is distinct from and maintains more traditional characteristics than the dialect of Birmingham, which has been more influenced by standard English due to having been urban for a longer time. It has also influenced the accents of the towns and villages in the counties to the north, south and west of the region.
Mother Goose's Little Treasures is a 2007 children's picture book by Iona Opie. It is a collection of nursery rhymes, some little known, chosen by Opie from the Mother Goose oeuvre.
