What is the poem or rhyme that starts as Absolute Truth have I none and mentions a washerwoman in it?

Answer 1

The original version, by Reginald Arkell in 1916, had six couplets:

WHEN THE WAR WILL END

Actual evidence I have none

But my aunt's charwoman's sister's son

Heard a policeman, on his beat,

Say to a housemaid on Downing Street,

That he had a brother, who had a friend,

Who knew when the war was going to end.

There have been many versions since then, often with a different twist at the end.

Here is a longer version printed in 2008:

Absolute knowledge have I none

But my aunt's washer woman's son

Heard a policeman on his beat

Say to a laborer on the street

That he got a letter just last week

Hand written in the finest Greek

From a Chinese coolie in Timbuktu

Who said that a son in Cuba knew

Of a colored gent in a Texas town

Who got it straight from a circus clown

That a man in Klondike heard the news

From a band of South American Jews

About some fellow from Borneo

Who knew a man who claimed to know

Of a hermit living beside a lake

Whose mother-in-law will undertake

To prove that a cousin's sister's niece

Has said in a finely written piece

That she has a son who knows a friend

Who knows the date the world will end.