Lost Bab ballads :: :: University of Virginia Library

Pray list to the story I'm going to tell
Of a monarch's most whimsical organ of smell;
For his fun and his frolic he'd only to tweak
The end of his famous fantastical beak.
And he split his old sides for a week and a day, so
Amused with his nose was King Archibald Naso.

Whenever a subject, I'll venture to take
Any wager, miles off, was enjoying a steak,
He would say to his chamberlain, “Come! I'll be shot
If some villain ain't eating his steak with shallot.
I demand for that onion his head at a blow,
'Twon't suit this olfactory organ, you know!

They would have us believe in Arabian tales,
That a mountainous magnet drew ships of their nails,
But a fact, which is stronger, I certainly deem,
Occurred when King Archibald walked by a stream;
Then the frogs and the lizards their pitches and tosses
Kept playing on Archibald's lengthy proboscis!

But the funniest freak which King Archibald had
Was the wish to be everywhere known as a lad;

He had chronic lumbago, rheumatics and gout,
He was wheezy, uneasy, dyspeptic and stout.
And yet though he coughed twenty times on the stairs,
He would still keep assuming most juvenile airs!

For years upon years he still kept on this track,
Of port and brown sherry he still took his whack,
But one morning he found to his utter dismay
That his wicked old nose had turned suddenly gray!
Then his friends sneaked away—many friends have this way—so
He fondled alone his old nose did King Naso.