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A Wise Old Owl

"A Wise Old Owl" is an English
language nursery
rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7734 and in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery
Rhymes, 2nd Ed. of 1997, as number 394. The rhyme is an improvement of a
traditional nursery rhyme "There was an owl lived in an oak, wisky, wasky,
weedle."

Lyrics

A wise old owl lived in an oak

The more he saw the less he spoke

The less he spoke the more he heard.

Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

This version was first published in Punch, April 10, 1875, and ran as follows:

There was an owl liv'd in an oak

The more he heard, the less he spoke

The less he spoke, the more he heard.

O, if men were all like that wise bird.

One version was published upon bookmarks during the mid-1930s,
and goes as follows:

A wise old owl lived in an oak,

The more he saw, the less he spoke

The less he spoke, the more he heard,

Now, wasn't he a wise old bird?

History

The
rhyme refers to the traditional image of owls as
the symbol of wisdom. It was recorded as early as 1875 and is apparently older
than that. It was quoted by John D. Rockefeller in
1915 and is frequently misattributed to Edward Hersey Richards and William
R. Cubbage.

During World War II, the United States army used
the rhyme on a poster with the tweaked ending, "Soldier.... be like that
old bird!" with the caption "Silence means security."