To be in a shoe . . .

There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

A fold-up greeting card.

The most common version of the rhyme is:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

The original illustration of Mother Goose Rhymes.

The Jell-O version of the rhyme.

The earliest printed version in Joseph Ritson's Gammer Gurton's Garland in 1794 has the coarser last line:

She whipp'd all their bums, and sent them to bed.

Many other variations were printed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Marjorie Ainsworth Decker published a Christian version of the rhyme in her The Christian Mother Goose Book published in 1978:

There was an old woman
Who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children,
And loved them all, too.
She said, "Thank you Lord Jesus,
For sending them bread."
Then kissed them all gladly
and sent them to bed. 

When in Adelaide earlier is year, I was in a shoe. Machtild, my Ozzie daughter, said she never thought she would saw me in public in slip-slops!