Every Lady In This Land

DESCRIPTION: "Every lady in this land, Has twenty nails upon each hand Five and twenty on hands and feet, And all this is true without deceit." De-riddled, this can be "Lady, lady in the land, Bear a tickle in your hand, If you laugh or if you smile...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1789 (Puzzling-cap, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: riddle baby
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 31, "Lady, lady in the land" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 291, "Every Lady In This Land" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #693, p. 273, "(Every lady in this land)"
ADDITIONAL: Peter and Iona Opie, _I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth_, #90, "(Every Lady in the Land" (1 text)

Roud #20571
NOTES [145 words]: The solution to this riddle is, of course, to re-punctuate. Instead of
Every lady in this land,
Has twenty nails upon each hand
Five and twenty on hands and feet,
And all this is true without deceit.
This should instead be read as follows:
Every lady in this land has twenty nails: upon each hand five, and twenty on hands and feet, and all this is true without deceit."
The other well-known example of this sort of thing is the famous "King Charles the First He walked and he talked Half an hour after His head was cut off" -- Roud #20748; Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 52; Opie, I Saw Esau, #89. That item too should perhaps be indexed, but it isn't a song but a pure trick verse.
Helen Kane's version has no hint of the riddle; I might have split it off if Roud hadn't lumped them. But it's likely that Kane's is a deliberately de-mystified version. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: KSUC031B

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