Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy and Bess Lyrics
Four girls find a nest with five eggs, each one takes an egg, and yet four are left. How? The answer is hidden in their names.
Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy and Bess
Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess,
They all went together to seek a bird's nest;
They found a bird's nest with five eggs in,
They all took one, and left four in.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/elizabeth-elspeth-betsy-and-bess/
- Type
- Counting Rhymes, Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken riddle
- Best for ages
- 5 to 10 years
What Does Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy and Bess Mean?
It is a riddle. If four girls each took an egg from a nest of five, there should be one left, not four. The trick is that Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy and Bess are all forms of the same name. It is one girl, called by four different names, so she took only one egg and left four.
Children today should know that taking eggs from wild birds' nests is not allowed in many countries, because it harms the birds. In the rhyme it simply sets up the puzzle.
History and Origin
James Orchard Halliwell included it among the riddles in his Nursery Rhymes of England in the 1840s. Elspeth is the Scottish form of Elizabeth, and Betsy and Bess were common pet names for it, so readers of the time would have spotted the trick more quickly than we do.
Learning Activities
- Name forms: list all the short forms of a long name, like Elizabeth (Liz, Beth, Lisa, Libby) or William (Will, Bill, Liam).
- Act it out: put five toy eggs in a bowl and let one child take one egg for each name. How many are left?
- Riddle time: pair it with As I Was Going to St Ives, another number riddle with a trick answer.