My mother found an old poetry book from our childhood. It has some really great poems in and I found this one, which was so lovely and simple and because it was about cakes even better!
I did try and search google for details of the author, Isabell Hempseed but couldn’t find anything.
RUFTY AND TUFTY
Rufty and Tufty were two little elves
Who lived in a hollow oak tree
They did all the cooking and cleaning themselves
And often asked friends in to tea.
Rufty wore blue, and Tufty wore red,
And each had a hat with a feather,
Their best Sunday shoes they kept under the bed -
They were made of magic green leather.
Rufty was clever and kept the accounts,
But Tufty preferred to do cooking.
He could make a fine cake without weighing amounts -
And eat it when no one was looking!
Isabell Hempseed
What a nice easy way to live!
June 30th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I love it! Really surprised nothing came up when you googled her, that’s lovely.
June 30th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Thanks for stopping by Julia. It is lovely isn’t it. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.
September 10th, 2007 at 3:07 am
This was the poem that I used at our 2nd or 3rd grade oratorical contest…have been searching for it for years as I could only remember the first stanza. Pretty amazing what you can find on the internet these days!
September 10th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Hi Ted and welcome.
Glad to have been of help.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I was delighted to find this poem online. I learnt it as a small child and recently taught my four-year-old daughter the first half, which is all I could remember! She will be delighted when I come home tonight with the rest of the words.
Thank you SO MUCH for taking the trouble to upload this one!!!
January 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Hi Heather, thanks for stopping by.
You are very welcome.
Hope your daughter is pleased and you have fun reciting it together.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
This is so great! I remember that poem from kindergarden over forty -five years ago and no-one else had ever heard of it! For a while I thought I’d visited some strange place in my imagination and came up with that little poem!!.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:21 am
It’s amazing the number of people that search for this poem, it’s a little classic.
Sue
September 8th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Ooooh! When I was four/five years old I played Tufty in a school play and we had a whole display board up with the poem on. I could only ever remember the lines, “Rufty was clever and did the accounts, while Tufty preferred to do cooking”
Thanks for helping me remember the rest of the words!
September 8th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Glad to be of service.