Matilda Who Told Lies And Was Burned To Death, by Hilaire Belloc

A highly entertaining version of the “boy who cried wolf” theme, in mock-heroic

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) was French by birth but spent most of his life in England, becoming naturalised as British in 1902. He was an extremely prolific writer in a number of fields as well as being a poet, and he even found time to serve as a Liberal Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1910.

Although he wrote a great deal of “serious” poetry, he is best remembered today for his satirical and children’s poems. The latter included his 1896 collection “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts” (followed by “More Beasts (for Worse Children)” in 1910) and “Cautionary Tales for Children” which appeared in 1907. There were eleven poems in this latter collection, plus a short introduction, with all the poems being written in rhyming couplets in a mock-heroic style.

“Matilda Who Told Lies, and was Burned to Death” is one of the best-known Cautionary Tales. It comprises 50 lines of rhyming couplets, split into two sections of 30 and 20 lines. In the first section we meet Matilda, whose age is not given, and her Aunt, with whom Matilda appears to live in a large London house. We learn about Matilda’s habit of lying, and her Aunt’s opposite characteristic, at the very start: