Category: Media

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”

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Spoiler warning! Snow White’s mother dies and her father the King advertises for a new bride. He ends up choosing Miss Maclahose, who brings to the castle with her a “magic talking looking glass.” It always provides the correct answer to any question you ask. For ten years, every day the Queen asks it “Who is the fairest of them all?” The answer is always herself. One day, though, it says that Snow White is prettier. The Queen is furious and orders a huntsman to kill her. In the forest, Snow White begs for her life and the huntsman relents and lets her go. Instead he purchases a bullock’s heart which the Queen gleefully eats. Meanwhile, Snow White hitches a ride to the city and got a job as a cook and maid for seven little men. They’re all ex-jockeys and they spend all their money betting on horses down at the track. She tells them she has an idea and sneaks back into the castle. She steals the mirror off the wall and returns with it to the dwarfs’ house. They use it to predict the winner of the next day’s horse race. Eventually they all become millionaires. “Which shows that gambling’s not a sin provided that you always win.”

“The Scorpion”

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Spoiler warning! A mother tells her child that she is lucky there are no scorpions in England. The scorpion’s name is Stingaling and he is a “most repulsive ugly thing”. He has black armor-plating and a long crinkly tail. When you see his tail move, run away! “He wants to make a sudden jump / And sting you hard upon your rump.” Then the mother notices that the child looks tense. The child explains that something is crawling underneath the sheet. It crawls up her leg. Could it be the Stingaling? “It’s on… it’s on my bottom now! / It’s … Ow! Ow-ow! Ow-ow! OW-OW!“

“The Price of Debauchery”

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Spoiler warning! The narrator is a girl who explains that her mother has warned her against kissing boys. “Just one small kiss and one small squeeze / Can land you with some foul disease.” The narrator forgets the advice though and lets Tom Young steal a kiss behind the house after school. “Oh, woe is me! I’ve paid the price! / I should have listened to advice. / My mum was right one hundredfold! / I’ve caught Tom’s horrid runny cold!”

“The Porcupine”

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Spoiler warning! The narrator is a child that loves Saturdays because that’s when she receives her pocket money. On this Saturday she rushed into town and bought a bag of raspberry cream chocolates. Then she headed into the woods to find a secret place to eat her chocs. She saw a comfy looking little mount and sat down, only to find she had sat on a porcupine! She jumped up and screamed and ran all the way home. She had large wiry prickles sticking out of her bum. Her mother decided that they should go to Mr. Myers, the dentist, as he has the most experience pulling things out. At the dentist’s office, the girl is held down while Mr. Myers uses pliers to pull each prickle out. He charges the mother fifty guineas afterwards. At the end of the poem the girl says she’s learned that porcupines have quills to prevent people from sitting on them. “Don’t copy me. Don’t be a twit. / Be sure you LOOK before you SIT.”

Fun Stuff

“The Pig”

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Spoiler warning! In England once there lived a very clever pig. He could do math problems in his head and he’d read every book. He knew a lot of things, but he didn’t know what LIFE was really all about. “What was the reason for his birth? / Why was he placed upon this earth?” Eventually the pig figured out the answer: he existed for people to eat. He would be turned into bacon and ham and sausages. “Such thoughts as these are not designed / To give a pig great peace of mind.” So the next day when Farmer Bland came to feed the pig, the pig based him on the head with a mighty roar. Then the pig proceeded to eat up every bit of the farmer. He felt no remorse. “I had a fairly powerful hunch / That he might have me for his lunch, / And so, because I feared the worst, / I thought I’d better eat him first.”

“Physical Training”

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Spoiler warning! Miss McPhee is a gym-instructress and asks young Bill Smith to stay after class. She says she’s going to teach him things and make him better on the rings and vaulting horse. She says she’s going to have to hold him very tight, and then she teaches him to wrestle with her on the mat. “Oh! gosh, the things she taught to me, / Our gym-instructress, Miss McPhee!”

“Once upon a time…”

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Spoiler warning! The Centipede sings this song, which is his favourite of all. He dances wildly on top of the peach singing about the time when “pigs were swine” and “monkeys chewed tobacco” and “goats ate tapioca”. We never hear the end of it, though, because unfortunately he gets too close to the edge of the peach and falls off.