Bedtime Stories

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JackandGill1791.jpg

In his 1948 book The Lost Art of Profanity, Burges Johnson quotes from an opinion by a Judge Hammond of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts:

The Watch and Ward Society of Boston years ago brought charges against a certain magazine for printing obscene matter, and my old friend the late Kendall Banning was forced to defend the publication. He felt sure that he could make a case, and during the train ride to Boston he had a sudden idea, and began jotting down such nursery rhymes as he could recall. Then he crossed out significant words and substituted asterisks. In court he asked permission to read these rhymes. They later appeared in a privately printed brochure which aroused delight or horror, according to the state of the reader’s mind. A mere sampling will serve here:

A dillar, a dollar
A ten-o’clock scholar,
What makes you *** so soon?
You used to *** at ten o’clock,
But now you *** at noon.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To *******
Jack fell down and broke his ***
And Jill came tumbling after.

Johnson says that the courtroom broke out in laughter and that Banning had made his point.

04/15/2016 UPDATE: Related (thanks, Mate):