and gave her father 50 wacks
when she saw what she had done
she gave her mother 51.
Killers always find a way to kill.
The key here is not that she had an axe, but that she had an axe and they didn't.
It was forty whacks from Crazy Lizzie, not fifty. I remember jumping rope to that old rhyme. Besides the lines flow better with the words Borden and forty. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father forty whacks.