Nursery rhyme time

In Competition No. 2474 you were invited to expand a nursery rhyme mockingly in the style of a well-known poet.

G.K. Chesterton did ‘Old King Cole’ as written by Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Whitman and Swinburne, and Anthony Deane expanded ‘Jack and Jill’ to the tune of more than 50 hilariously Kiplingesque lines. These can be found in Apes and Parrots, an anthology by that keen cricketer, drinker and parodist, Sir John Squire. I am fairly well-read in poetry, but I am not a mind-reader, so I was puzzled by one or two competitors who omitted to mention whom they were parodying, for instance Martin Parker’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’, which was witty, but at whose expense?

Commendations to G.M. Davis, Peter Scupham, Josephine Boyle and Frank Mc Donald. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to G.McIlraith. Happy new year!

(Burns)
Wee sleekit, not so tim’rous moosie,
You ran awa’ and found a hoosie
Secure from me and auld Tam pussy
Inside the clock
And there you settled douce and cosy.
Tick-tock,