Note NEW ENGLAND'S ANNOYANCES — Chapter V
Reading edition
Page 65. New England's Annoyances. These verses are undoubtedly of a very early date, probably about 1630. Rufus W. Griswold, in his introduction to "The Poets and Poetry of America" (Philadelphia, 1854), calls them "the first verses by a colonist," a statement which is, of course, impossible of proof. They appeared originally in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, with the statement that they were "taken memoriter, in 1785, from the lips of an old lady at the advanced age of 96."