If All the World Were Apple Pie
If All the World Were Apple Pie
Nursery Rhyme
If all the world were apple pie,
And all the sea were ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What would we have to drink?
Notes
Harry's Ladder to Learning (1850) has these two additional lines at the end:
It's enough to make an old man
Scratch his head and think.
I found the version below in The Baby's Bouquet, A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes by Walter Crane (1878):
1. If all the world were paper,
And all the sea were ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What should we do for drink?
2. If all the world were sand - O!
Oh, then what should we lack - O!
If, as they say, there were no clay,
How should we take tobacco?
3. If all our vessels ran-a,
If none but had a crack,
If Spanish apes ate all the grapes,
How should we do for sack*?
*The word sack comes from "vin sec" which is French for dry wine. So sack here means dry wine.
Here's a version from The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith:
If all the world were water,
And all the water were ink,
What should we do for bread and cheese?
What should we do for drink?
(Scroll down for the lyrics.)
Thanks and Acknowledgements
The black and white illustration is from The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897). This rhyme can be found in The Real Mother Goose (1916), illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright.
