From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 65-66.
BIDDY PROTESTS
“I celebrate the good old days
When no one checked up on our lays.
These modern methods make me sick,”
Thus spake old Biddy Dominick.
“We laid to please ourselves you bet,
Folks took what fresh eggs they could get.
We were not kept a narrow yard in
But wandered freely through the garden:
For every hen and every chicken
Had all out doors to scratch and pick in,
And as we ambled here and there
Of every crop we took our share.
Although we roosted oft in trees
And shivered in the midnight breeze,
No sane man looked for winter eggs
Nor watched the color of our legs.
We slept at night like Christian folks
And had no wish to make more yolks;
But now we stay up half the night
And lay our eggs by Mazda light*.
If I should go too soon to slumber
Some watchful gent would take my number.
Of proper privacy divested,
[66]
We’re caught and pinched and weighed and tested.
This culling business I protest;
I’m growing old, I want to rest,
But I must still perform as rated
Or have my old head amputated.
If I myself escape the block,
Some friends are missing from the flock,
And when the honeymoon is over,
They seize and execute my lover;
Yea when the hatching season’s done
They swat my husband and my son.”
Elf.Ed Notes
* Mazda light. — Thomas Edison co-founded a company called The Mazda Light Company. I presume that the name came from Ahura-Mazda, the ancient Zoroastrian supreme God in Persia (Iran).
Mazda means “omniscient, all-knowing,” see Media, Babylona and Persia Zénaïde A. Ragozin; London: T. Fisher Unwin; 4th Edition, [undated], p. 61.
In Survey of Instrumentation and Measurement, edited by Stephen A. Dyer [of Kansas State University]; New York: Wiley-Interscience, John Wiley & Sons; 2001 on p. 875, it states:
“With the invention of the electric light in 1879, Thomas Edison made the first electric equipment, the incandescent lamp. . . . The Mazda Light Company was first formed with Edison to solve the problem of accurate measurements in 1881 with the development of the chemical meter.”
Edison’s light bulb was the first design feasible for wide-spread use. See the Wikipedia entry for Incandescent Light Bulb.