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The Purple Cow

by Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

LibriVox volunteers bring you nine different versions of this famous nonsense rhyme, the weekly poem of April 2nd, 2006. The April Fool’s Day spirit was slow to leave us this spring, so as you listen, watch out for mischief!
(Summary by Laura Fox)

• Bartleby e-text
• Wikipedia – Gelett Burgess
• LibriVox’s The Purple Cow Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book (4.1 MB)
• RSS feed · Subscribe in iTunes

mp3 and ogg files

• Version 1 – 00:00:29
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.3MB]
  Read by: Amanda
• Version 2 – 00:00:33
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.5MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.4MB]
  Read by: Annie Coleman
• Version 3 – 00:00:27
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.3MB]
  Read by: Aaron Hochwimmer
• Version 4 – 00:00:41
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.3MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.6MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.4MB]
  Read by: Catharine Eastman
• Version 5 – 00:00:47
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.3MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.7MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.4MB]
  Read by: Juan Carlos Bagnell
• Version 6 – 00:00:26
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.3MB]
  Read by: Joe Clune
• Version 7 – 00:00:41
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.3MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.6MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.4MB]
  Read by: Laura Fox
• Version 8 – 00:03:42
  [mp3@64kbps - 1.7MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 3.5MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 1.9MB]
  Read by: Old Man (with a little help from Robert)
• Version 9 – 00:00:44
  [mp3@64kbps - 0.3MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 0.7MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 0.4MB]
  Read by: Straight Version