Rhymes as punctuation riddles
I came across this old rhyme in a collection of nursery rhymes:
Every lady in this land
Has twenty nails upon each hand
Five and twenty on hands and feet
All this is true without deceit
It is a special kind of riddle, which one might call a punctuation riddle; it only makes sense if one inserts the appropriate punctuation. In England a more familiar example is this:
King Charles the First walked and talked
Half an hour after his head was cut off.
A semi-colon must be assumed, of course, at the end of the first line. This goes back at least as far as the 18th Century. But I can't think of any other examples; does anyone know of any? Or of anything similar in other languages?
Every lady in this land
Has twenty nails upon each hand
Five and twenty on hands and feet
All this is true without deceit
It is a special kind of riddle, which one might call a punctuation riddle; it only makes sense if one inserts the appropriate punctuation. In England a more familiar example is this:
King Charles the First walked and talked
Half an hour after his head was cut off.
A semi-colon must be assumed, of course, at the end of the first line. This goes back at least as far as the 18th Century. But I can't think of any other examples; does anyone know of any? Or of anything similar in other languages?