Little Willie rhymes are light verses that pair an indifferent or cheerfully inappropriate response with a gruesome act of violence, typically in quatrain form, attributed to the poet Harry Graham. The earliest examples appeared in his 1898 collection Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, published under the pen name Col. D. Streamer, and the genre of poetic black humor remained popular enough that The Washington Post ran a reader contest for new examples in 2011.
Facts
Place of Origin Notable ExampleRuthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1898) by Harry Graham 1 Defining TraitA cheerfully inappropriate response to a gruesome act of violence in quatrain form 1 FAQs
Do Little Willie rhymes always follow the same rhyme scheme?
No. Early rhymes usually rhyme AABB, and later ones relaxed this to ABAB.
No. The earliest examples, from Harry Graham's 1898 Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, usually rhyme in couplets (AABB). That pattern was later relaxed, and a verse from a 1904 collection of Willie Ballads uses an alternating ABAB scheme instead.
Sources
1. Little Willie rhymes (Wikipedia)
Opening paragraph and Ruthless Rhymes note
published in 1898 under Graham's pen name Col. D. Streamer while he was serving in the Coldstream Guards
Origin and attribution section
published in 1898 under Graham's pen name Col. D. Streamer while he was serving in the Coldstream Guards
Opening paragraph
Little Willie rhymes are light verses including an indifferent or cheerfully inappropriate response to a gruesome act of violence in a quatrain form attributed to Harry Graham (1874-1936).
In Group: Humorous and Children Verse, Lead section
Little Willie rhymes are light verses including an indifferent or cheerfully inappropriate response to a gruesome act of violence in a quatrain form attributed to Harry Graham (1874-1936).
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