(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...I SIR,—I cannot tell
your correspondent Frances H. Meares where to find the words of the old song she heard years ago, but I can tell her that they were sung to me by my nursemaid, who was a Hampshire girl, more than seventy years ago. As I remember them they ran :—
"Keemo kimo lingtum nipcat, Rigdum bulliminy kimie; Strim stram paddle liddle larrow borrow rigtail, Rigdum bulliminy kimie."
I have written them as they sounded to my childish ears, and the only time I have since come across any of them was in the Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, where the words " Kemo kimo lingtum nipcat " are given as, part of the mock Masonic ritual invented to pull the leg of the hero. My musical nursemaid used the words only as a chorus or refrain to another song, e.g.:-
" A frog he would a wooing go, Rigdum bulliminy kimie," &c., &e.
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