A Secret Recipe

A Secret Recipe I have a secret recipe.I bake it in a pan. I got it from my mother, who had it from her Gran Her gran was five and forty when she found it in a book. She baked it on a big black range. She was a wondrous cook. The book was old and tatty, belonging to her aunt Who got it from the tally man, he was a handsome gent The tally man was Irish.The book his mother‘s pride. He didn’t want to part with it for her spirit was inside His mother was a spay wife. Her writing it was bold. She copied down her recipe that never can be told Aunt Annie loved the tally man, and so became the heir To the very precious recipe that no one else could share Until Great granny found it, after auntie died, but she knew it was a secret and a secret it would bide. And so it passed on down the line, until it came to me. I treasure that old tatty book that no one else can see I’ll leave it to my daughter when I go off to heaven That precious old and tatty book from eighteen twenty seven.