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

[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.