Little Polly Flinders
Sat among the cinders,
Warming her pretty little toes.
Her mother came and caught her,
and whipped her little daughter
For spoiling her nice new clothes.
{Original Nursery Rhyme}
The date was December 21, 1817, the temperature outside felt like -10 degrees Celsius . It felt like the coldest day of the
year here in my small English village, and my family and I had just walked home
from our Sunday evening church service. With it being that last service
before Christmas, my mother wanted me to look extra special. She and my father
save up enough money to be able to buy the nicest gown the village seamstress
made.
It was so cold
outside and the church was so far away, that by the time I got home I could
hardly feel my toes. My mother started a fire for us all to warm up next to,
but told me I had to change before I could sit down. I knew it would take me
too much time to take the dress off by myself, so when my mother left the room
I sat down on the floor right next to the fire and warmed up my feet as fast as
I could. I was almost ready to get up and go to my room when my mother walked
in to check on the fire. When she saw me sitting on the floor in my nice dress
she was furious. It didn’t help that when I stood up to leave there was a
giant soot mark on the back of my dress where I had sat down on the floor. This
sent my mother into a rage. She started yelling at me for being so
irresponsible and careless with such an expensive piece of clothing. I knew
what was about to come, my mother never likes to let me off easy. She went to
get her ruler so that she could smack me one the back of my hands. For not only
disobeying her, but for getting soot on my dress, she said I would get ten
smacks per hand. I tried not to cry, it was over rather quickly. After she was done
with my punishment, she led me to my room so that she could make sure my dress
got cleaned as quickly as possible. I just hope that I will never have to wear
that gown ever again.
Author's Note: There isn't much to the original rhyme so I had a lot of free reign. The only things that were stated was that it was cold out, because Polly needed to warm her feet up, Polly was wearing a very nice dress, and that her mother got very upset when she saw what had happened. Since the weather was cold I set the story close to Christmas so that Polly would have a reason to have such a nice dress. I decided to add more detail about her being at the fire place and then her subsequent punishment.
Bibliography: This story is based off of the nursery rhyme "Little Polly Flinders" from The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Land
:( sad story! Poor Polly Finders! She probably should have been a bit more careful with her dress, but I would have done the same. I like how you included more detail and gave Polly more of a voice in your story. The original rhyme is definitely very bare bones so it was cool that you put in that it was Christmas to show why her parents would have been so mad that she ruined her dress. Hopefully they'll be able to clean it!
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ReplyDeleteOof, strict parents, huh. Well, it WAS 1817 after all. I liked the story, gave me sort of a diary feeling. This story also captures every detail of the original rhyme, while adding in some characterization and personality to it, which all felt like it fit with the original rhyme. Also I noticed that December 21st, 1817 was a Sunday! Nice attention to detail.
ReplyDeleteI thought you did a really nice job of transitioning the original nursery rhyme to your own story. I think everything flowed very well and had a lot of good detail. I also liked that it was a lesson to be learned, even though it was sad that she got punished for trying to stay warm.
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