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Little Poll Parrot

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"Little Poll Parrot"
Nursery rhyme
Published1853[citation needed]
Songwriter(s)Unknown

"Little Poll Parrot" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20178.

Lyrics

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Like Little Miss Muffet and Little Jack Horner the verse is an example of a nursery rhyme that contains six dactylic lines. The most common modern version of the lyrics is:

Little Poll Parrot
Sat in his garret
Eating toast and tea;
A little brown mouse
Jumped into the house,
And stole it all away.[1]

Origins

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It has been argued that the rhyme originates in the seventeenth century.[2] The earliest printed version was in a collection by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.[1]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 353.
  2. ^ Hunt, Peter (1998). International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Taylor & Francis. p. 178. ISBN 0-415-08856-9.