David, I think it originally was a "juice-harp" (for the saliva) but mutated into "jew's-harp" (because of the similarity of the sounds of the names).

Robert Meyer

That sounds likely, Robert.

Ours (first grade) was:

Ring around the roses,
Pocket full of poseys,
Upstairs, downstairs,
STOOP!
.
and another:
.
Here we go loopity loop
(close ring up tight))
Here we go loopity lite,
(back up, opening ring)
Here we go loopity loop
(open again)
All on a Saturday night.
.

And of course, The farmer in the dell, but I just can't remember how that one goes beyond The wife takes a child.

G/W

A popular south Louisiana children's chant:

She rocks in the treetop all day long
Rockin' and a robin gonna sing that song
All the little girls on Happy Days
Like to hear the Fonz go "hey hey hey" (thumbs up)
Rockin' Robin rock rock tonight
Rockin' Robin rock rock tonight
Momma in the kitchen cookin' rice
Daddy round the corner shootin' dice
Brother in jail raisin' hell
Sister round the corner selling fruit cocktail

(verses are added freely)


And another:

Let's go zoodio zoodio zoodio
Let's go zoodio all night long
Well, it's step back Sally Sally Sally
A-walkin' through the alley, alley, alley
I peeped through my window and what did I see?
I saw a big fat lady from Tennessee
She raised her dress above her knee
And she shimmy shimmy shimmy all over me
Oh, let's go zoodio zoodio zoodio all night long...

Here's one by which I was ridden on the knees of adults in almost babyhood. Certainly this was not originated by a white person, but it was adopted by them for the universal pleasure of bouncing tots on the knee. My daughter loved it when she was a wee-wee tot; and so did my grandson.:

(slowly)Here come Massa, trot, trot, trot, trot...
(faster)Here come Missy, pace-a-pace-a-pace-a-pace...
(very fast)Here come Jack, gallop a-gallop a-gallop a-gallop...

.

Comments here concerning race-ism and the day's news about im-migration remind me of a sublime work by our late American master of light verse, Bret Harte. Viz.::

Plain Language from Truthful James

WHICH I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
With the smile that was childlike and bland.

Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye’s sleeve,
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see,—
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, “Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,”—
And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game “he did not understand.”

In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,—that’s wax.

Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,—
Which the same I am free to maintain.
.

Pace tua

G.


[This message has been edited by Golias (edited May 01, 2006).]

Bret Harte's poem is pretty appalling. Actually there seems to be a disturbingly large "legacy" of verse out there that is rooted in racism and jingoistic attitudes-- mostly out of the late 19th/early 20th century (clearly a very different time from ours, sociologically speaking-- and infused with very different sensibilities). I think, though, that this may not be the place to post bunches of them, for pretty obvious reasons.

Incidentally, I want to apologize to one and all for my being so scarce lately; I've been up in the north woods at a place called Bjorklunden (Lawrence University's Seminar Center) teaching METER to a great group of people who actually wanted to learn it!

But it's good to be back, to read all your interesting posts--

Marilyn

LITTLE Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
O! don’t you wish that you were me?

It is the sanctimonious, self-congratulatory attitude of those who imagine they are somehow wiser or better than their forebears which is perhaps saddening though hardly appalling nor even surprising. Those who consciously or unconsciously adopt the fallacy of Hegel regarding history rather than the existentialist view of Kierkegaard are living out the truth of the latter while disproving the former, though they may believe they are doing just the opposite.

G.



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited May 02, 2006).]

About the knee-riding songs, I think there were many.
One of the older ones from England goes:

This is the way the ladies ride,
trot, trot, trot, trot,
This is the way the ladies ride,
trot, trot, trot.

This is the way the gentlemen ride,
gallop-a-trot, gallop-a-trot,
This is the way the gentlemen ride,
gallop-a-gallop-a-trot.

This is the way the farmers ride,
hobbledehoy, hobbledehoy,
This is the way the farmers ride,
hobblede-hobbledehoy!
(Of course on this verse the baby is tossed
up in the air.)
the air on this verse.)

Some of these rhymes were an important outlet for anger among children. Spankings, beatings, and the incredible monotony of sitting at a desk most of the schoolday made for an awful lot of repressed childhood anger. Singing these songs was exhilarating, and they were conceived before television, before the concept that it should be unnecessary to physically defend yourself against attacks by other children your own age. If you never learned how fight (girl or boy), you were at a terrible disadvantage and certainly likely to become someone's victim on the way home from school one day.

"Pick on someone your own size!" was a common retort. Confronted with physical intimidation on a regular basis, children were hardly expected to keep their taunts to themselves!

The most common taunt of all was this, and it was always in self-defense:

Sticks and stones will break my bones,
but names will never hurt me!

This was sung to the old tune:

Cheer, cheer, cheer, the school is burning down!
Cheer, cheer, cheer, it's burning to the ground!
Cheer, cheer, cheer, Miss Brice is turning brown!
There'll be a hot time in the old school tonight.

This was chanted rather than sung:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
gave her mother forty wacks.
When she saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one!

Terese

PS. How about the old retort, "It's a free country!" whenever anyone suggested or demanded you adhere to their personal rules.



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited May 10, 2006).]

Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbtttt.

Acknowledging that some things have changed for the better is not the same as pretending we're inherently wiser or better than our forebears. It may be that for each thing that's changed for the better, some other thing has changed for the worse. But that doesn't change the fact that some things are better.

Or perhaps you think nothing's changed for the better since the good old days, when it was okay to say "nigger" - back when white people's superiority was treated as a given; when unwed pregnant girls were disowned and shunned while the boys who'd gotten them that way were winked at and slapped on the back; when gays and their spouses suffered quietly all their lives in sham marriages; when nobody reported child abuse; when everybody drove around drunk and worked in asbestos-lined buildings with peeling lead paint and locked fire exits.