There's a world of tradition there.
Anyone else interested?
Here's a couple for starters.
Best,
David

'Queen, Queen Caroline,
Washed her hair in turpentine,
Turpentine to make it shine,
Queen, Queen Caroline.'

'My mother said I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood.
When I did, she would say
You naughty girl to disobey:
Your hair won't grow, your shoes won't shine
You naughty girl, you shan't be mine!'

Hi David,

I don't suppose the Simpson's generation use these and I guess they must be dying out fast.

Here's a counting-out rhyme we used in Northumberland in the 1950's and early 60's.

Dibso magso,
who's on?
Not you.

There was another -

It started

Ickle ockle black bottle....infuriating, I can't remember the rest.

Of course we used Eenie Meanie Miney Mo...but the second line is so un-PC I'm afraid I can't bring myself to admit to it!

There was a hiding game involving secreting a tennis ball in your clothing, I seem to remember much rummaging to retrieve it, but then they did not have social workers back then!

The rhyme went:

Queenie queenie
who's got the ball?
It isn't in my pocket,
it wasn't me who took it.
Queenie queenie
who's got the ball?

There were lots of skipping rhymes too - my sister might remember a few.

cheers

Alan



[This message has been edited by Alan Wickes (edited February 13, 2006).]

Well, Alan, may as well get this one down before it finally disappears:

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,
Catch a nigger by his toe;
If he squeals let him go,
Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo.
YOU ARE IT.

I think there are many variations. Amazingly by today's standards, we thought nothing of it at primary school; it was just a counting rhyme.
Best,
David

Here's the variation I remember from childhood:

Eeny Meeny Miney Mo
Catch a nigger by his toe
If he hollers make him pay
Fifty dollars every day.
O-U-T spells out goes you,
You old dirty dishrag YOU!

We thought nothing of that one, either. But this next one I knew was naughty, because it made me feel sorry for the one little quadroon or mulatto boy in our rural Alabama elementary school (first through 4th grades, 1935-9). Of course we children were thoughtless, but so were our teachers...good teachers and otherwise kind ladies but, in retrospect...thoughtless:

Nigger, Nigger, pull your trigger
Up and down the Coosa River.
Snotty nose, ragged clothes,
That's the way the nigger goes.
My mammy told me to choose this very ONE!

G/W

By the time it came to me in northern California in the late 60s/early 70s, it had become significantly more PC:

Eenie Meanie Minie Moe
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers, make him pay
Twenty dollars every day.
My mother said to pick the very best one and you are not IT.

Other counting rhymes of that era:

Mickey Mouse built a house. How many bricks did he use?

*answer*

One two three (and so on) and you are not it.

Another quick counting out rhyme:

Twenty horses in a stable. One jumped OUT.

Interestingly, there's a folklore paper I've read (fairly easy to find) which traces the variations of Eenie Meanie Minie Moe and finds that the first line is extremely ancient and likely goes back to a druidic rite to choose "one" (eenie) to go across the straits of Menai (meanie) to the isle of Mona (minie) to get sacrificed. I'm not certain of the thoughts on "moe" but it's certainly the start of "mortis" so it seems to follow.

I am currently up to my ears in counting rhymes, etc. My toddler got a four CD set of nursery rhymes and playground tunes. While a rather shocking number have had the violence edited out of them (the farmer's wife now cuts the mice slices of cheese with a carving knife! And the Old Woman who Lives in a Shoe hugs and kisses her children before sending them to bed!), I have also been musing lately on the number of head injuries in children's rhymes, as, for instance:

It's raining, it's pouring
The old man is snoring
He bumped his head and went to bed
And couldn't get up in the morning

I mean, heavens, the man is clearly in a coma!

And then of course there is the thinly-veiled sexual content of many a jumprope rhyme, often involving doctors being sent for:

Cinderella
Dressed in yella
Went upstairs to see her fella
How many kisses did she get?
one two three, etc.

Followed by:

Cinderella
Dressed in yella
Went upstairs to kiss her fella
By mistake
She kissed a snake
How many doctors did it take?

As for un-PC nursery rhymes, this one seems innocent enough:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?

until you realize that Fuzzy Wuzzy was a term British soldiers used for warriors in the Sudan, see Kipling's Fuzzy Wuzzy

Tell tale tit
Yer mammy cannae knit
Yer daddy’s in the dustbin
eating fish’n’chips!

*

I am a little Dutch girl
as pretty as can be be be
and all the boys at my school
go crazy over me me me.

My boyfriend’s name is Leslie.
He looks like Elvis Presley
with his ten fine toes and a pimple on his nose,
and this is how my story goes;

One day while I was walking,
I saw my boyfriend talking
to a little girl with golden hair
and this is what he said to her,

“I L-O-V-E love you
I K-I-S-S kiss you
down by the R-I-V-E-R,
River Olé!”

While we did not have "Liar! liar!Pants on fire," we did have a version of "Tattle tale tit," and also an accusatory rhyme for cowardice:

Coward! coward!
Buttermilk soured.
Hasn't been churned in twenty-four hours.

When this was resented, the accused might say:

"You're a liar."
"You're another one and a dog if you take it!"

If a fight began, bystanders would chant:

Fight! fight!
Nigger and a white.
Who's the nigger
and who's the white?

G/W

"We thought nothing of it"

Depends who gets to be one of us.

Best,
Marcia

Anyone remember this one? We did a hand claping game to it. My eyes have been opened to the subject matter as I type this!


Miss Suzy had a baby
she named him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
to she if he could swim

He drank up all the water
and ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub
but it wouldn't go down his throat

Miss Suzy called the doctor
Miss Suzy called the nurse
Miss Suzy called the lady
with the alligator purse

Mumps, said the doctor
Measles, said the nurse
(it gets fuzzy here but I think it was something like)
Out walked the lady
with the baby in her purse?