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:
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
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“In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)