Little Poll Parrot

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"Little Poll Parrot"
Nursery rhyme
Published1853[ citation needed ]
Songwriter(s) Unknown

"Little Poll Parrot" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20178.

Contents

Lyrics

Like Little Miss Muffet and Little Jack Horner the verse is an example of a nursery rhyme that contains six dactylic lines. The most common modern version of the lyrics is:

Little Poll Parrot
Sat in his garret
Eating toast and tea;
A little brown mouse
Jumped into the house,
And stole it all away. [1]

Origins

It has been argued that the rhyme originates in the seventeenth century. [2] The earliest printed version was in a collection by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s. [1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 353.
  2. Hunt, Peter (1998). International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature . Taylor & Francis. p.  178. ISBN   0-415-08856-9.