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“A lemon has pips, A yard has ships, And I’ll have Chips!”

is brought out with vivid effect by the narrator at intervals and with terror-striking force due to its expected recurrence, just as in the case of the story of “Orange.” As Dickens puts it—“I don’t know why, but the fact of the Devil expressing himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.” And again—“For this refrain I had waited since its last appearance with inexpressible horror, which now culminated.” And—“The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses.”

There can be but little doubt that this Cante-fable is a real nurse’s story, remembered by the great author from his childhood, and Dickens so well describes the feeling of terror that the rhyme inspires in the childish listener, that we cannot but grant that the original makers of Cante-fable were quite alive to the dramatic force such recurring rhymes possess.

Other examples of the Cante-fable are to be found in Chambers’ Popular Rhymes of Scotland and elsewhere. All, however, point to the verse being used as an ornamental and dramatic addition to the story, and certainly not as indicating a transitionary stage between a rhyming and a prose narrative.