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

[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.