Terrible Tim
Haven’t you heard of Terrible Tim!
Well, don’t you get in the way of him.
He eats lions for breakfast
And leopards for lunch,
And gobbles them down
With one terrible crunch.
He could mix a whole city
All up in a mess,
He could drink up a sea
Or an ocean, I guess.
You’d better be watching for Terrible Tim,
And run when you first get your peepers on him..
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
Terrible Tim feels straight out of a schoolyard — the kind of rhyme a kid would holler just to sound dangerous. Every line gets bigger, louder, and funnier. Lions for breakfast, leopards for lunch — you can practically hear the boast getting out of hand. By the end, Tim’s a one-man hurricane who could drink up the ocean if he felt like it.
And then you see the picture — and burst out laughing. Blanche Fisher Wright shows not a terrifying brute but a scruffy fellow in a floppy hat, holding up what looks suspiciously like a kitten with spots. His expression says it all: even he doesn’t quite buy the story. The “terrible” part, it turns out, is just talk.
