Eat, Eat, Eat
Here come the sweet potatoes
And here’s the Sunday meat,
I guess we must be ready now
To eat, eat, eat.
I’m going to have the nicey plate
And Daddy’s leather seat,
And wear my patent-leather shoes
To eat, eat, eat.
My Daddy’s talking all about
The war, and some old fleet,
I wonder if he never, never,
Never wants to eat.
We’re going to have some apple-cake,
We’re going to have a treat.
O hurry, hurry, Daddy,
Let us eat, eat, eat.
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
This rhyme captures a scene almost every child has lived through — that endless, unbearable stretch between “food is ready” and actually being allowed to eat it. It’s Sunday-best formal, full of manners and ritual, but the narrator is pure appetite in human form. Sweet potatoes steaming, the good china coming out, polished shoes for the big occasion — and yet nothing is happening fast enough.
Meanwhile, Daddy is off discussing wars and fleets like a statesman at Parliament, completely unmoved by the fact that there is apple-cake physically in the building. The contrast is hilarious: grown-ups talk about history, children live in the now. Adults intellectualize, children simply want the cake before it cools.
It’s funny, it’s familiar, and it’s a little sentimental — a perfect little window into the old-fashioned Sunday dinner, where patience was expected… and never naturally supplied by the youngest at the table.
