Were you a little Dutch girl

You’d be, perhaps, as sweet

As now you are, my darling,

And very much more neat!

You’d be a little housewife,

And even at your play

You’d take your knitting needles,

And knit and knit away!

You’d never be forgetting

To feed your pussy-cat,

And she, like Holland pussies,

Would grow so sleek and fat.

But were you, dear, a Gretchen,

You’d live across the sea,

And so would be, my dearie,

No kind of use to me.