Folk Rhyme
The case was memorialized in a popular skipping-rope rhyme:
-
- Lizzie Borden took an axe
- And gave her mother forty whacks.
- When she saw what she had done
- She gave her father forty-one.
Folklore says the rhyme was made up by an anonymous writer as a tune to sell newspapers. Others attribute it to the ubiquitous, but anonymous "Mother Goose". In reality, Lizzie's stepmother suffered 18 or 19 blows; her father, 11 blows.
Read more about this topic: Lizzie Borden
Famous quotes containing the words folk and/or rhyme:
“An’ when the earth’s as cauld’s the mune
An’ a’ its folk are lang syne deid,
On coontless stars the Babe maun cry
An’ the Crucified maun bleed.”
—Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978)
“The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king’s affairs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)