Betty Botter

Betty Botter is a tongue-twister written by Carolyn Wells. It was originally titled "The Butter Betty Bought." By the middle of the 20th century, it had become part of the Mother Goose collection of nursery rhymes.

Construction

The construction is based on alliteration, using the repeated two-syllable pattern /'b__tə 'b__tə 'b__tə/ with a range of vowels in the first, stressed syllable. The difficulty is in clearly and consistently differentiating all the vowels from each other.

They are almost all short vowels:

/æ/ batter

/e/ better - Betty

/ɪ/ bitter - bit o'

/ɒ/ Botter

/ʌ/ butter

with one long vowel /ɔ:/ 'Bought a'

Lyrics

When it was first published in "The Jingle Book" in 1899 it read:

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter;

“But,” she said, “this butter’s bitter!

If I put it in my batter

It will make my batter bitter

But a bit of better butter

Will but make my batter better.”

so she bought a bit of butter

Better than her bitter butter,

Made her bitter batter better.

So ’twas better Betty Botter

Bought a bit of better butter.

Variations

"Betty Botter" has some variations, but most are very similar.

Alternative versions may add extra words to clarify the meaning, such as "I would like to make some ... tasted her butter and said... and threw away her ..." in this Caribbean version, which focuses on the story content instead of the tongue-twister content:

Betty Botter had a bit of butter and said,

"I would like to make some batter."

Betty Botter tasted her butter and said,

"If I put this in my batter it would make my batter bitter."

Betty Botter bought some fresher butter and threw away her bitter butter

Betty put her butter in her batter and it made her batter better.

Other versions emphasize the tongue-twister content by minimizing extraneous words:

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.

The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter

And made her batter bitter.

But a bit of better butter

Makes better batter.

So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter,

Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better.

Some versions are shortened:

Betty bought some butter but the butter she bought was bitter,

So she bought some better butter to make the bitter batter better

Another version:

Betty Botter bought some butter.

But she said this butter's bitter,

If I put it in my batter it will

make my batter bitter...

So...Betty Botter bought a

Bit of better butter and made

Her batter bunch better.

Another Version:

Betty bought a bit of butter, but the butter was too bitter

So, Betty bought some better butter to make the bitter butter better.

Canadian writer Dennis Lee included an extended version entitled "The Sitter and the Butter and the Better Batter Fritter" in his classic children's poetry collection Alligator Pie.

Another version:

Betty bought some butter, but the butter Betty bought was bitter, so Betty bought some better butter to make the bitter butter better, but the bitter butter made the better butter bitter

Another version:

Betty bought a bit of butter,

but the bit of butter Betty bought was bitter,

so Betty bought a better bit of butter,

which was better than the bit of butter Betty bought before