Little Willie rhymes are light verses including an indifferent or cheerfully inappropriate response to a gruesome act of violence in a quatrain form attributed to Harry Graham (1874-1936).
The earliest was included among the Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes published in 1898 under Graham's pen name Col. D. Streamer while he was serving in the Coldstream Guards.
[2]The above meter and line length, often with rhyme scheme AABB.,[3] was subsequently relaxed with alternative rhyming scheme ABAB as illustrated by the following verse from a 1904 collection of Willie Ballads:
[4]This genre of poetic black humor remained popular into the 21st century.
[1] The Washington Post ran a contest in 2011 encouraging readers to compose examples.