There Was an Old Man of the Hague Lyrics
The old man of the Hague has ideas that are excessively vague. He builds a balloon to examine the moon, and ends by labelling him deluded.
There Was an Old Man of the Hague
There was an Old Man of the Hague,
Whose ideas were excessively vague;
He built a balloon,
To examine the moon,
That deluded Old Man of the Hague.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/there-was-an-old-man-of-the-hague/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Edward Lear
- Tune
- Dreamy and slow on the first two lines, then a lift on the balloon
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| He built a balloon, | Puff out your cheeks and draw a big circle in the air. |
| To examine the moon, | Look up and shade your eyes with one hand. |
What Does There Was an Old Man of the Hague Mean?
The old man's problem is in the first two lines: his ideas were excessively vague. Vague means not clear or not well thought out. His big idea is to build a balloon in order to examine the moon, which is the kind of plan that sounds grand and has no detail. The poem ends by calling him deluded, which means fooled by his own idea.
The limerick never says whether he went up. So the reader is left to wonder what happened next. Hague and vague rhyme, and balloon and moon rhyme in the short lines. The Hague is a city in the Netherlands.
History and Origin
Lear explains in his later book More Nonsense that most of the drawings and rhymes of his first book were put on stone in 1846 and first published then by Mr. Thomas McLean of the Haymarket. After that edition sold out he added many more.
Learning Activities
- Balloon trip: blow up a balloon and ask the child where they would fly it.
- Moon plan: draw a plan for reaching the moon with all the details the old man left out.
- Vague or clear: say a vague sentence and a clear one and let the child guess which is which.
- Look at the moon: on a clear night, look at the moon together and say what can be seen.