Saturday 6 October 2007

Quaker Nursery Rhyme

Quaker, Quaker, troublemaker,
How do you know you're right?
My words can't say,
My life just may,
I've stopped being so polite.


Burt Bacharach, eat your heart out.

11 comments:

Tim Neal said...

Conjugating Quakers

I'm a Quaker
You're a Quaker
He's a Quaker bore
They're all Quakers
She's a Quaker
Quakers all Galore

:-)

Simon Heywood said...

I'm a lonely little Quaker
and I'm feeling very small.
I'm the clerk of Monthly Meeting
and there's no-one here at all.
I've got all the minutes drafted
and I'm ready with my pen
but the sense of Monthly Meeting
is they've stayed at home again.
It's a 1660 meeting house
that's hidden in the dark
down a rustic public footpath
in a Yorkshire national park,
and I looked it up on Multimap
and drove my four-by-four
over mountains where James Nayler preached
in 1654.
If it wasn't for the Quakers
in the Quaker burial ground
then I'd be the only Quaker
for a hundred miles around,
for the buses stop at seven
and there's something on TV
and this month it's nominations
and there's no-one here but me.
I could minute they're prevented
but they never said what by.
I'm a lonely little Quaker
and I think I want to cry ...

Robin M. said...

What lovely little rhymes. I think I will link here very soon. Thank you.

Allison said...

When I told my grandma (not a Quaker) I was hanging out with Quakers, she said when she was a kid, they used to say:

No more laughter
No more fun
Quaker Meeting has begun


Hahaha

Will T said...

Then there is the little song I learned in YFNA

I'd rather be a jolly St. Francis
Singing his canticle to the sun,
Than a dour, old sobersides Quake
Whose diet would appear to have been,
Spiritual Persimmons.

Will T

Laurie Chase Kruczek said...

The town of Friend
Just miles away
No Quakers live there
I'm unhappy to say

The name of the town
Just came from some guy
His last name was Friend
In case you wondered why

Unknown said...

Simon Heywood, your poems tell the truth and show that we can laugh at ourselves, thank you so much!

Will T.: did you know that when persimmons are allowed to ripen they are the sweetest of all fruit?

Anonymous said...

Will T: That's a direct quote of Thomas Kelly in the Testament of Devotion.

Anonymous said...

Please may I have permission to reproduce Simon Heywood's "I'm a lonely little Quaker..." in the monthly newsletter for Southern East Anglia Area Meeting, which comes out at the end of this month.
Thank you, John Kay, Colchester meeting.

JennyD said...

I would also like permission to reproduce these in the newsletter of Portland Friends Meeting in Portland, Maine, USA. Funny!

Irene Ridgeon said...

I hope that it will be in order to quote 'I'm a lonely little Quaker' in the Surrey and Hampshire Border AM newsletter this month.
Best wishes,
Irene