A Great Lady Lyrics
The Queen of Nonsense Land does everything the wrong way round: she wears her bonnet on her hand, carpets her ceilings, sleeps on her doors and orders a wig for a fly.
A Great Lady
This is the Queen of Nonsense Land,
She wears her bonnet on her hand;
She carpets her ceilings and frescos her floors,
She eats on her windows and sleeps on her doors.
Oh, ho! Oh, ho! to think there could be
A lady so silly-down-dilly as she!
She goes for a walk on an ocean wave,
She fishes for cats in a coral cave;
She drinks from an empty glass of milk,
And lines her potato trees with silk.
I'm sure that fornever and never was seen
So foolish a thing as the Nonsense Queen!
She ordered a wig for a blue bottle fly,
And she wrote a note to a pumpkin pie;
She makes all the oysters wear emerald rings,
And does dozens of other nonsensible things.
Oh! the scatterbrained, shatterbrained lady so grand,
Her Royal Skyhighness of Nonsense Land!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/a-great-lady/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Carolyn Wells
- Tune
- Grand and proud, with a flourish on the last line
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| She wears her bonnet on her hand | Put a fist on top of your other hand like a hat. |
| She goes for a walk on an ocean wave | Walk on the spot, bobbing up and down like a boat. |
What Does A Great Lady Mean?
Every line gives the queen something silly to do, and the pleasure is in how wrong each one is. She wears a bonnet on her hand, covers her ceilings with carpet, "frescos" her floors (a fresco is a painting done on a wall or ceiling, so painting a floor that way is backwards) and eats on her windows and sleeps on her doors. She walks on the sea, fishes for cats, drinks from an empty glass and orders a wig for a blue bottle fly, a shiny blue fly. She writes a note to a pumpkin pie and makes oysters wear emerald rings.
The speaker keeps interrupting with delighted cries, and the last line gives her a title that is a pun: Her Royal Skyhighness, a play on Her Royal Highness. Fornever is not a standard word: it plays on forever and never.
History and Origin
Carolyn Wells was an American writer of humorous verse. The poem is from her collection The Jingle Book, copyrighted in 1899 and reprinted in 1901.
Learning Activities
- Backwards day: let the child do three things the wrong way round, such as wearing a sock on a hand, and laugh at them.
- Add a line: make up a new silly thing the queen does, such as dressing the moon in a scarf.
- Draw the queen: draw the Queen of Nonsense Land with her bonnet on her hand.
- Real or nonsense: read out lines from the poem and sort them into things that can happen and things that cannot.