Beela by the Sea

First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).

You can almost hear this one being sung out over the water. It’s a nonsense work song, all rhythm and splash — catching whales, oysters, eels, anything that happens to swim by. The names — Uncle Ike and Fatty Ford — sound like they came straight out of a small-town story, half real, half made up.

Blanche Fisher Wright’s picture makes it even better: the old fisherman with his pipe, the child beside him, both watching their lines while the clouds above turn into their wildest catches. The fish they imagine look bigger than anything the sea could ever hold.

It’s that mix of pretending and believing that gives Beela-by-the-Sea its charm. It’s not really about fishing at all — it’s about the kind of day when the world feels endless and every splash could be a story starting.