http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch...undrhymes.html

and
http://www.odps.org/glossword/index.php?a=list&d=3


**

Google "playground rhymes" for a wealth of such pages.

Good topic!

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited February 14, 2006).]

G/W,

I had those growing up, too, sorry to say. I also have the Coosa River running through town, or is it out of town, since Rome is where it starts.

I know my dad has passed this down to it's fifth generation, starting at least from his grandfather:

Raccoon's tail has rings all round,
Possum's tail is bare.
Rabbit ain't got no tail at all,
Just a little ball of hair.

---------
Bugsy

.

The Bronx version of the counting-out rhyme that David posted was:

Eenie meenie miny mo
Catch a nigger by the toe
If he hollers let him go
My mother said to pick this one
Out goes Y-O-U

Sometime during my childhood, "nigger" becamed "tiger". PC from the start!

I also have a confession to make. As a very bright, hyper-competitive, obnoxious young prick, I remember that I counted the syllables in this and other rhymes, and figured out exactly where to start with groups of two, three, four and even five other kids in order to pre-direct the supposedly fickle finger of fate. (From there, it was only a half step to Formal poetry.)

Bugsy,

Those two critters got around. We had this one:

'Possum up the 'simmon tree,
Raccoon on the ground.
Raccoon said to the 'possum,
'Throw me some 'simmons down."

Romantic note: In 1897 sweet 16-year-old Norma Roper and her beau, Red Will Hayes (who looked just like Wyatt Earp) eloped from Maplesville, Ala, by train to your town of Rome, Ga., for a quick wedding.It was the first and only time my maternal grandmother ever left the state of Alabama.

History note: In April, 1863, after marching and fighting for seven days and nights, Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest,CSA, ("Get thar fustest with the mostest men") captured an entire Union brigade under Col. A.D. Straight,just across the Coosa River from Rome, Ga.

I daresay you knew about the capture, if not the elopement.

G/W

You're barmy, you're barmy,
your mother's in the army.


------
I sent a letter to my love
and on the way I dropped it.
Someone must have picked it up
and put it in their pocket.

not you--not you--not you

YOU........

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited February 14, 2006).]

Googled "Mr. East gave a feast," and got three pages of results, so it's too well-known, but how about this naughty rhyme, current when I was a kid?

Mr. Brown went to town
On a load of lumber;
Stuck a splinter in his butt
And thought he heard it thunder.

Mr. Brown went to town
On a load of hay;
Mr. Martin came a-fartin'
And blowed it all away.


Then there was this trick:

"Adam and Eve and Pinch Metight
Went over the hill to see the fight.
Adam and Eve came back,
Who stayed to see the fight?"

"Pinch Metight----OUCH!"

Two ways to spell Mississippi:

(1) (By syllables, as learned by my grandmother in elementary school circa 1887) "M-I-S, Mis, S-I-S, sis, Missis, S-I-P, sip, Mississip, P-I, pi, Mississippi."

(2) Funny way: "Em eye crooked-letter crooked-letter eye crooked-letter crooked-letter eye humpback humpback eye."

G/W

Wasn't much for jumprope myself, but the girls on our playground used this one:

Mabel, Mabel, set the table
How many dishes are you able?
One-two-three-(etc.)

And then there are the finger-play rhymes:

Here is the church and here is the steeple
Open the doors, and there are the people.

(Lace your hands together, fingers down inside, palms down to make a rectangle. Put your pinkies up to make the steeple, then unfold your thumbs for the church doors, then invert your hands, fingers still laced, and wiggle fingers for the parishioners.)

The reverse of that was this one:

These are mommy's knives and forks.
This is daddy's table.
This is sister's looking glass
and this is baby's cradle.

(Fingers become the knives and forks, hands turned the other way into the rectangle becomes the table. Putting the pinkies up instead of becoming a steeple becomes the mirror of an old-style vanity, and putting up the index fingers on the other side makes the shape of an old-fashioned cradle.)

There are loads of versions of this one, but this is the one I knew, more or less:

Miss Lucy had a steam boat
The steamboat had a bell,
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to...

Hello operator
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I'll cut off your...

Behind the 'fridgerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And cut her big fat...

Ask me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Pulling down their...

Flies are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
The boys and girls are kissing
In the D A R K dark dark dark


Early exercises in zeugma (I know, I know, there are quibbles about the term, still.)

Some of my favorites are the Little Willie rhymes:

Willie, with a thirst for gore,
Nailed the baby to the door.
Mother said, with humor quaint,
'Willie, dear, you'll mar the paint.'

Or:

Little Willie took a mirror,
Licked the mercury right off,
Thinking in his childish folly,
It would cure the whooping cough.

'Oh-oh-oh!', said Willie's mother;
'Ah-ah-ah!', said Mrs Brown;
'Twas a chilly day for Willie
When the mercury went down.

Or the variant:

Little Willie now is standing
On the golden shore,
For what he thought was H20
Was H2SO4.

G/W,

"It was the first and only time my maternal grandmother ever left the state of Alabama."

You almost drew an Alabama joke from me with that statement. You'd probably already know it, though, but with the word "Georgia" in all the places it says "Alabama".

---------
Bugsy

.


[This message has been edited by Lightning Bug (edited February 17, 2006).]