PRINTED BY THE ROYAL AUTHORITY of Messrs March Winds and April Showers. BATTLE OF PEA SOUP, FOUGHT ON THE FIFTY-TWELFTH DAY OF ROTTENSTICKS [Illustration] This memorable battle took place on the Ocean of Sprats, situated on the Continent of Green Peas, within half a mile of a Donkey; where Bobby the Ratcatcher swallowed the Monument, and the poor old soldier was killed by being drowned in a bog of buttermilk: such an unseasonable battle was never known before. It took place on the Fifty-twelfth day, on London Bridge, between 15 and 160 o’clock in the night. Arthur Mc Kelly’s nose was knocked into eighteen thousand pieces and converted into a cheese knife, and sold in Plum pudding court, going up to Christmas on the top side of little Bobby the Ratcatcher; the regiment was commanded by General Pigsfry, and Colonel Beefsteak, the bone polisher, who lived one thousand and ninety-nine miles beyond mutton chops, in the parish of Blackberry pudding, a robust strong man, well fed upon marrow bones, and Darby O’Daud, Judy Saggin’s son, was mortally wounded, his second hand coat that was made and mended by Patrick Mc Patch, three calendar months beyond the city of Cork. The back buttons were turned before, and a mail coach could have gone through the button holes, the sleeves were massacred and murdered, his waistcoat suddenly took fright, jumped aside off his back, and tumbled into the trap of great Calamity, which was fixed within a quarter of an inch of bad luck. This made him roar out “potatoes” loud enough to be heard sixteen hundred miles beyond Buttermilk, and Selim O’Blunder, the second son of Teddy Humbug, a son to Mr. Nonsense, was terribly wounded in the understanding by the frightful appearance of the blade of a slug, his remembrance was knocked against the corner of his consideration, which capsized his wisdom out of his Knowledge. His ability was rocking in the cradle of Lamentation, which was fixed between joy and sorrow, where Lamentation fell asleep, and Billy Riley received three dreadful wounds--both his elbows were put out of joint, the shin bones of his knee breeches were transmogrified into a woolpack, and his stockings were made to rue the day his legs were born. Billy Gobbles, the dish licker’s son, was accidentally wounded in different parts, first in his constitution, and then in his feelings. After which a piece of plum pudding stuck in the stomach and knocked his appetite asunder, and the sons of buttermilk were all put to the rout, and never stopped till they went and rode the bull, and started off to the land of potatoes, where buttermilk is sold by the yard--to plaster their wounds with potatoes, and the humbugging hospitals of both nations in Dublin is filled with all the buttermilk sons that were killed and wounded in this terrible battle of Pea Soup.