Counting out

[magid]

So, I read the book the library was giving out, a book full of rhymes and such that kids use to figure out who's it in tag, or for counting while jumping rope or keeping time with those complicated hand-slapping games I never could get the hang of. And the strange part was how few of the ones in the book I recognized, a mere half dozen or so*, out of well over 150, perhaps 200 rhymes. Obviously, some of it is that this was compiled from English sources, but still, I'd've thought there would've been more that were familiar (heck, if only from reading English kid books).

I started thinking about the rhymes that we used when I was young. And I'm sad to say that few have stuck with me. The ones I do remember were mostly about counting out to decide who was (or wasn't) it, so hands were put into a circle and someone would count off, each word for a hand.


There's
"One potato, two potato, three potato, four
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more"

And
"Eeny meeny miney moe
Catch a tiger by the toe,
If he hollers, let him go,
Eeny meeny miney moe."

Also,
"My mother and your mother were hanging out the clothes.
My mother punched your mother in the nose.
What color blood came out?"
(And then the answer color was spelled out, continuing around everyone's hands.)

Oh, and
"It's raining, it's pouring,
The old man is snoring
He went to bed
And bumped his head
And couldn't get up in the morning."
(Though that wasn't for counting.)

I remember something about a girl dressed all in black black black, with her hair down her back back back, but I don't know that I ever knew that one completely. And there are others I seem to have lost.


* From memory, some of the ones in the book that were familiar:

• Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names (words) will never hurt me.
  
• Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, you children are gone. (I've never understood why this was so mean to ladybugs.)
  
• Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
  But Moses supposes erroneously;
  For nobody's toeses are posies of roses,
  As Moses supposes his toeses to be.
  
• Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine days old.
  
• Rain, rain go away, come again some other day.

Comments

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

There's a song floating around -- "Freedom Park" by Marah (I hear it on the radio every once in a while) -- that uses "Shimmy shimmy coco pop" as part of its chorus, and that always makes me think of childhood jump-rope games.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Huh. I don't think I've heard the song. Or at least, if I have, I haven't been listening to the words very closely. 'Cause that does sound like a jump-rope line.

Do you remember any?

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I remember "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" as a regular jump-rope song. I remember better the clapping games (like "Miss Mary Mac," mentioned below and "My Jolly Playmate/My Vicious Enemy"). beckyfeld and I used to play the clapping games a lot on longish trips.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I don't know either "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" or "My Jolly Playmate/My Vicious Enemy".


(Why do I always have a moment of reading "vicious" as "viscous"?)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

"Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" is a jump-rope rhyme. You mimicked, while jumping rope, what the Teddy Bear did:

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, show your shoe.
Teddy bear, teddy, bear, that will do.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, go upstairs
Teddy bear, teddy bear, say your prayers
Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn out the light
Teddy bear, teddy, bear, say goodnight.

"My Jolly Playmate/My Vicious Enemy" is a clapping game:

My Jolly Playmate
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb up my apple tree
Slide down my rainbow
Into my cellar door
And we'll be jolly friends
For ever more

My jolly playmate
I cannot play with you
My dolly has the flu
Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo (alternately, "She threw up in my shoe")
Don't have no rainbow
Don't have no cellar door
But we'll be jolly friends
For ever more

alternately...

My vicious enemy
Come out and fight with me
And bring your bumblebee
Climb up my poison tree
Slide down my razor blade
Into my dungeon door
And we'll be vicious enemies
For ever more

I'm not sure which is scarier -- that I remember the words or that I still remember all the hand movements.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, I think I've heard "My Jolly Playmate." Definitely hadn't heard "My Vicious Enemy" or "Teddy Bear". Though I rather like the unambiguousness of the enmity.

Not scary at all; how many hours did you spend playing these with Becky et al after all?

[queue.livejournal.com]

Not only was it compiled from English sources, but it was first published in 1947. So there are both the separation in space and the separation in time that factor into you not being familiar with so many of them.

A variation that I learned:
Eeny meeny miney moe
catch a tiger by the toe
if he hollers, let him go,
my mother told me to pick the very best one and you are not it you dirty dirty dish rag you

(obviously one for choosing who wasn't it)

[magid.livejournal.com]

The original book was in 1947, but they revised it in 1992 (actually, she did, since he was no longer extant). So it's not as wholly out of date as all that.

Now you've got me wondering about how these things change over time, and what length a childhood generation is. I mean, I thought I had these word-perfect growing up, so how long would they take to mutate?

I think I've heard part of your variation, except for the dirty dish rag part.

[queue.livejournal.com]

Replaying it in my head, I remember that there was a "blue shoe" (sometimes) tacked on to the end: "you dirty dirty dish rag you blue shoe". Which, of course, doesn't matter if you're only choosing between two people.

[magid.livejournal.com]

'Course, if you're choosing between two people, it's just as easy to flip a coin.

(Unless you're Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, for whom it always lands heads :-)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

The "Moses supposes" rhyme can be heard in the movie "Singing in the Rain".

Didn't you ever sing sing "Three Cheers for the Bus Driver" on the trip to day-camp?

[magid.livejournal.com]

The Singing in the Rain version is slightly different, and with some additions (to be song-length, after all), but yeah.

I'd forgotten "Three Cheers for the Bus Driver." Or maybe I was thinking of it as more of a song than part of a kid subculture piece. Hm. It's included on a list of "bus songs."

Which also had a variation of something I remember us saying:
Glory, glory, halleluia!
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
I bopped her on the bean with a watermelon seed
and that was the end of her!

(Their variant has
I popped her on the bean with a rotten tangerine
and her teeth came marching out!

Which, while a rotten tangerine has more mass than a watermelon seed, seems to make equally little sense.)

Oh, and this reminds me of the nickel song, too. There's one version, but I remember slightly different words:
"Oh, I went to the donut shop to buy myself a treat
'Cause I was so hungry from my head to my feet.
So I picked up a donut and I wiped off the grease,
And I handed the lady a five-cent piece.
Well, she looked at the nickel and she looked at me,
And she said, "Kind sir, you can plainly see.
There's a hole in the nickel, there's a hole right through."
Said I, "There's a hole in the donut, too!"

[queue.livejournal.com]

The nickel song seems like it would be fairly easy to place in time, assuming that a donut did not cost a nickel all that long.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*nod*
Though if it's early enough, prices didn't change as much as they do now, so it might not be a very precise placement.


And of course, there are lots of word problems one could write, about how much n donuts would cost at a nickel each, and comparing the current cost of a donut to what a nickel would have inflated to using the official rates of inflation.

probably shouldn't contribute, but...

[dannarra.livejournal.com]

Ours was:
Glory, glory, halleluia!
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
Met 'em at the door with a a loaded .44
Now he ain't my teacher no more...

Re: probably shouldn't contribute, but...

[magid.livejournal.com]

Hee!

That seems rather more... final than the other versions :-).

Re: probably shouldn't contribute, but...

[dannarra.livejournal.com]

And with proper grammar even.

[cellio]

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, you children are gone. (I've never understood why this was so mean to ladybugs.)

I learned it as "...your children alone" -- i.e. they're stuck in a burning home and mama needs to get home and rescue them.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes a lot more sense, certainly.

Though why should ladybugs' houses always be on fire? I mean, ladybugs are fairly universally liked; they don't sting, or stink, and they are good for plants, plus pretty.

[cellio]

Yeah, I never got why people were picking on the nice ladybugs, either. I guess "mosquito, mosquito, fly away home" doesn't scan. (Though if I knew that a populated mosquito den was on fire I wouldn't warn anyone!)

Miss Mary Mack

[theora.livejournal.com]

This is the version I remember:

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,
All dressed in black, black, black,
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,
All down her back, back, back,
She asked her mother, mother, mother,
For fifty cents, cents, cents,
To see the boys, boys, boys,
Jump over the fence, fence, fence,
They jumped so high, high, high,
They reached the sky, sky, sky,
They never came back, back, back,
Till the 4th of July, July, July!

Re: Miss Mary Mack

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's it!

At least, that's got all the parts I remember in it, though somehow the later lines don't quite seem familiar. Hm.

D'you remember any others?

Re: Miss Mary Mack

[theora.livejournal.com]

I remember another choosing-type one:

Chch chch Number 9
Goin' down Chicago line
If the train falls off the track
Do you want your money back,
Yes, no, or maybe?
(the person whose turn it is answers with one of those, then)
Y-E-S spells yes, and you shall not be it.
(or N-O or M-A-Y-B-E as appropriate...)

Hmm, I remember there was another one where it came to you and you had to say a color that was then spelled out, but I can't remember any of the rhyme.

I also had two slightly different versions of Eeney Meeney. My parents taught me it with a monkey instead of a tiger, but otherwise the same as the one you posted. But then I learned another one from the neighborhood kids, mostly like queue's, but the end is a little different:

Eeny meeny miney moe
catch a tiger by the toe
if he hollers, let him go,
Eeny meeny miney moe
My mother told me to choose the very best one
and that one is Y-O-U and you shall not be it

Just to spin it out a bit, I guess :)

Re: Miss Mary Mack

[theora.livejournal.com]

Doh, the color one I was thinking of is the mother-punching one you mentioned, just slightly different wording.

Re: Miss Mary Mack

[magid.livejournal.com]

I always thought that one odd. Dads punching each other out, maybe. But moms? Scratching, or name calling, or poison, not punching...

(Nice userpic; I don't think I've seen that one before.)

Re: Miss Mary Mack

[magid.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard the Chicago one before, but I think we sometimes used this tiger variant.

I remember when someone (older, I think) pointed out that it was all determined, since the number of words was constant, so you could choose appropriate rhymes to avoid being it, if you wanted. I'd never thought about it, and it was very disillusioning, somehow.

Re: Miss Mary Mack

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

We used to do the first one as a clapping game, but we used slightly different words:

engine engine number 9
going down the Chicago line
if the train falls off the track
do you get your money back
yes, no, maybe so

And then we would repeat the last line ("yes, no, maybe so") over and over again, a little bit faster each time, until someone messed up.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> I remember something about a girl dressed all in black black black, with her hair down her back back back, but I don't know that I ever knew that one completely.

That would be "Miss Mary Mack" -- though I must have learned a different variant. The one I knew went:

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
all dressed in black, black, black
with silver buttons, buttons, buttons
all down her back, back, back
she asked her mother, mother, mother
for 50 cents, cents, cents
to see the elephants, elephants, elephants
jump over the fence, fence, fence
they jumped so high, high, high
they touched the sky, sky, sky
and didn't come back, back, back
till the 4th of July, lie, lie

Then there were some who continued it with:

July don't walk, walk, walk
July don't talk, talk, talk
July don't eat, eat, eat
with a fork and spoon, spoon, spoon

One of our friends here has a 9-yr-old daughter who occasionally coaxes me into playing the hand-slap games, and so far "Miss Mary Mack" is the only song we both know.

[magid.livejournal.com]

No, that's it. I just never knew it well enough to get it in the right order. I think the elephants sound more familiar than the boys in Theora's edition. Though I've never heard the extended July version.

Which other songs do you know?

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Let's see ... there was a counting chant that we used in jump-roping:

Cinderella, dressed in yella
went upstairs to kiss her fella
made a mistake, kissed a snake
how many doctors did it take
was it 1, 2, 3 ... etc.

This was another hand-slap thing where we stood in a group of four and alternated between clapping hands with the person opposite and the two people to the side:

Shake, shake, shake to the bottom of the lake
I don't wanna go to school no more, more, more
Got the big fat teacher at the door, door, door
see what I mean, jellybean
wash your face with gasoline
made a mistake, kissed a snake
come out with a bellyache

There was a variant of this that started "shake, shake, shake to the rah, rah, rah", but I don't remember all the words. I know they were similar to the Jackson 5 song "Rockin' Robin" but I can't remember them.

I do remember that I knew others, but I'm blanking on what they were. But for what it's worth, I did know a different version of one of the counting ditties:

Eeenie meenie minie moe
catch a tiger by his toe
if he hollers make him pay
50 dollars every day
my mother told me to pick the very best one
and so I picked the very best one
and you are not it

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Oops -- I made a mistake with the "shake, shake, shake" chant. It actually ends:

made a mistake, jumped in a lake
come out with a bellyache

[magid.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. Otherwise there's be far too much snake kissing going on :-)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've never heard the Cinderella one. And though I've seen the four-person clapping games, I haven't heard the shake shake shake words.

Nice tiger variant. It's perfect for future lawyers, making someone (well, something) else pay for what you do (in the name of noise pollution, of course :-), and insulting in just the right way. (Y'know, I don't remember being as consistently insulting as these ditties so often seem to be. Maybe I'm just selectively remembering...)

And "counting ditties" sounds exactly right, somehow.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> Y'know, I don't remember being as consistently insulting as these ditties so often seem to be.

Y'know, neither do I. If my memory serves me, none of these were exactly seen as insults when I was of the age to be saying them -- they were just a formula that had to be followed (although it was always disappointing when you weren't picked via eenie meenie minie moe).

I just remembered another counting ditty:

bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish
how many pieces do you wish

This one was good for jump-roping if you followed it up with a count, though I also remember it being used from time to time when we had to pick one person from a group. The person who came up at the word "wish" would say a number, and then the leader would count off that number and eliminate whoever came last, and so on till only one person was left.

[magid.livejournal.com]

none of these were exactly seen as insults when I was of the age to be saying them -- they were just a formula that had to be followed
Yes, that's exactly it. But when you look at a lot of them now, well...

Bubble gum rings a bell, faintly. I never managed real jump rope (uncoordinated plus self-conscious), but I might've heard other girls using that. [I played Chinese jump rope instead, which was much easier.]

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

I wasn't very good at jump rope either, for the exact same reasons. I could manage turning the rope and did an acceptably mediocre job jumping if the rope started swinging after I was standing in the middle, but for some reason the prospect of running into an already turning rope was just scary. Jumping rope with several people at the same time was also hard.

[ceo]

A similar book I have is Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts.

The "teacher hit me with a ruler" one is only the chorus of a larger work, whose first verse goes like this:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured all the teachers and are breaking all the rules
We are marching down the corridor to hang the principal
Our truth is marching on

(I'm probably misremembering the last line, as that's from the original)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool book! Could I borrow it sometime?

According to the bus song site, you're using the correct last line of the stanza, shared with the original. I don't know why we seemed to sing the chorus so much more than the first stanza, but we did.

[ceo]

Sure.

The bus song site is missing the most important verse of the Yogi Bear Song:

Yogi is bisexual
AC-DC
Yogi is bisexual
AC-DC bear
etc.

My fellow deranged UU youth eventually came up with additional verses remarking upon the sexual proclivities of all of the denizens of Jellystone.