Shake and Shake the Ketchup Bottle -- Richard Armour

(Poem #1816) Shake and Shake the Ketchup Bottle Shake and shake the ketchup bottle None'll come, and then a lot'll -- Richard Armour

This delightful little couplet is not nearly as well known as it deserves to
be, and, to make matters worse, is consistently misattributed to Ogden
Nash. I'd always thought that the latter was merely due to the fact that it
"sounded Nashian", but apparently the story is deeper than that - as Eric
Shackle writes:

  According to Nash's grand-daughter, Frances R. Smith of Baltimore,
  Maryland, (and she should know) what he actually wrote was:

      "The Catsup Bottle"
      First a little
      Then a lottle

  (Catsup is another American word for ketchup. Brits and Aussies call it
  tomato sauce.)

  Then, in 1949, another US humorist, Richard Willard Armour (1906-1989),
  seems to have gleefully seized on Nash's rhyme, and produced the couplet
  that many people enjoy reciting to this day.

    -- http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/ketchup.htm

As with Augustus de Morgan's rewriting of Swift's verse about the flea (see
the comment upon Poem #797), Armour's verse is a distinct improvement on the
original, and I feel he deserves the credit for it.

martin

[Links]

The poem is quoted in a wonderful article about *why* ketchup behaves thus:
 http://exploration.nasa.gov/articles/07jun_elastic_fluids-liftoff.html

Biography:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armour_(poet)

Armour has also written several hilarious (and, I believe, out-of-print)
books - keep an eye out for them.