One bright day
In the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced one another
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And he ran and he killed those two dead boys
And if you don’t believe it’s true
Ask the blind man;
He saw it too.
This little backwards poem was an instant hit with some of my students. They liked it so much they learned it by heart. One of them tried to translate it into Icelandic.
A longer and more learned version may be found at the British Columbia Folklore Society website.
It runs like this:
One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys* got up to fight, [*or men]
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,
One was blind and the other couldn’t, see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout “hooray!”
A paralysed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to arrest the two dead boys,
If you don’t believe this story’s true,
Ask the blind man he saw it too!
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