Little Willie rhymes are light verses including an indifferent or cheerfully inappropriate response to a gruesome act of violence in a quatrain form attributed to Harry Graham (1874-1936). The earliest was included among the Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes published in 1898 under Graham's pen name Col. D. Streamer while he was serving in the Coldstream Guards.[1]
Billy, in one of his nice new sashes, Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes; Now, although the room grows chilly, I haven’t the heart to poke poor Billy.[2]
The above meter and line length, often rhymed aabb,[3] was subsequently relaxed with alternative rhyming scheme abab as illustrated by the following verse from a 1904 collection of Willie Ballads:
Willie walking on the track, The engine gave the worst of squeals, And then they turned the engine back And scraped off Willie from the wheels.[4]
This genre of poetic black humor remained popular into the 21st century.[1]The Washington Post ran a contest in 2011 encouraging readers to compose examples.[5]
^ abMcKenty, Bob. "Spectrum: Little Willies". Light. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
^Streamer, Col. D. (1901). Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes. New York: R.H. Russell.
^"Little Willie". Glossary of Poetic Terms. Poets' Graves. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
^Robbins, F.N. (1904). The Willie Ballads with other Limericks and Nonsense Rhymes. Columbia, South Carolina: R.L. Bryan Company. p. 9.
^"Give us the Willies". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
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