The Troubles of Biddy

Well now as Spring is trying to spring here and it is Monday and I am feeling rather around the twist today I thought I might just start the week of with a darling set of the vintage illustrations to be found in The Troubles of Biddy. (1917)

Biddy is a chicken, bewildered by the effort to create a family, and the little girl in the pink dress is her Mistress. Accompanying each darling little picture, by the illustrator Margaret Evans Price, is the worried verse of a new Mummy, and it is so resplendent of a new season, and Motherhood and the dramatic wailings of those of blessed with the responsibility of little ones, that I rather felt the scrapbook that is BrocanteHome shouldn’t be without it…

I don’t understand it; I cannot see why;
For surely to be a good mother I’d try;
Although I would see that they did as I said!”
And Biddy, in sorrow and grief hung her head.

So deep was the longing of poor Biddy’s heart,
She felt that with life she was ready to part;
But glancing about in her trouble and pain
She saw that her mistress was coming again;

Her babies were all in the watering trough,
Regardless of sickness, disease, and of cough.
“Oh dear,” cried poor Biddy, “What now shall I do?
My children will drown and before my eyes too!”

And Mistress cried, “Biddy, now please don’t you fear,
They simply love water, and oh! aren’t they dear?
I’ll keep them all safe, so Biddy go ‘way!
And let your poor children have freedom to play.”

Each day in the trough and the puddles they played
And off where the grass was the deepest they stayed
While Biddy would search for them, clucking for hours
Over the barnyard and in ‘mong’ the flowers.

The little log barn was a refuge at night
Where often poor Biddy for courage would fight;
And there, with her feathers above her young brood,
She tried to instruct them in ways to be good.