l me, grandmummie so kind,
Why you've a _tail_ grows out _behind_?"
"Oh! hush thee, hush thee, pretty dear,
My pincushion I hang on there!"

"Why do your _eyes_ so glare on me?"
"They are your pretty face to see."
"Why do your _ears_ so long appear?"
"They are your pretty voice to hear."

"Oh! tell me, granny, why to-night
Your teeth appear so long and white?"[44]
Then, growling, cried the wolf so grim,
"They are to tear you limb from limb!"

His hungry teeth the wolf king gnash'd,
His sparkling eyes with fury flash'd,
He op'd his jaws all sprent with blood,
And fell on small red riding hood.

He tore her bowels out one and two,
"Little maid, I will eat you!"
But when he tore out three and four,
The little maid she was no more!

Take warning hence, ye children fair;
Of wolves' insidious arts beware;
And, as you pass each lonely wood,
Ah! think of small red riding hood!

With custards sent, nor loiter slow,
Nor gather blue bells as you go;
Get not to bed with grandmummie,
Lest she a ravenous wolf should be!

_Port Folio_, II-173, June 5, 1802, Phila.

[Footnote 41: This stanza is borrowed from an affecting and
sanguinary description in a German ballad by Professor Von
Spluttbach, called Skulth den Balch, or Sour Mthltz; in
English, as far as a translation can convey an idea of the
horror of the original, "The Bloody Banquet, or the Gulph of
Ghosts!!!" a very terrible and meritorious production.]

[Footnote 42: Repetition is the soul of ballad writing.]

[Footnote 43: The reader will do my heroine the justice to
remember that she set out with only _three_, consequently her
wish that another had been added, arose from a motive purely
affectionate and characteristic. This benevolent trait,
ingeniously insinuated, excites the interest of the reader
for her, and adds horror to the catastrophe.]

[Footnote 44: Our heroine is here lost in _double_
astonishment; not only the _length_, but the _whiteness_ of
her grandmother's teeth excites her wonder and suspicion.]

The following piece of singular and original composition was found
amongst the papers of an old Dutchman, in Albany. The manuscript has
suffered considerably from the tooth of time, and from several marks
of antiquity about it, it may be safely inferred, that a century at