One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys* got up to fight, [*or men]
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,

One was blind and the other couldn’t, see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout “hooray!”

A paralysed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,

A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to arrest the two dead boys,
If you don’t believe this story’s true,
Ask the blind man he saw it too!

A great deal of electronic mail has been sent to us about the rhyme since we first uploaded this page. The material that follows is an analysis of the line variants followed by a composite version and the analysis of a rhyme (Ladies and gentlemen, hoboes and tramps) that is known by at least half of our correspondents as the leadup to the “Two Dead Boys”. However, whether it is a separate rhyme that has been added later to give the original poem more body or is part of the original that has been forgotten by many is a moot point at this late stage. The difficulties with trying to justify linking the parts and calling them a single poem revolve particularly round the inconsistencies with meter and rhyme, and with the orphan lines that still cannot be paired.