Here Comes a Cabbage
Here comes a cabbage with a bonnet on its head,
A pretty purple bonnet with a bow of blue and red;
And here comes a bottle with a collar ’round its neck,
A handsome linen collar, too, without a spot or speck;
Next comes a meat-saw, his job is biting beef,
And according to the cleaver he has gold in all his teeth;
And last of all there comes along, amid the ringing cheers,
A princely Indian corn-stalk with rings in both his ears.
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
There’s a delightful bit of dream-logic at work here — the kind of parade only a child would invent. A cabbage in a bonnet, a bottle dressed for Sunday, a saw with golden teeth — the poem treats household things as if they have social lives of their own. It’s absurd, but not too absurd — just the right kind of nonsense that feels like it could walk in from the garden at any moment and politely tip its hat.
