schoolyard heritage

[flea]

Casper has started to bring home some schoolyard rhymes - stuff I remember knowing and using as a child, but that we never say at home, so she's clearly learned it at school. The big example is Eenie, meenie, minie, mo (wikipedia is interesting and I think fairly well-documented on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe).

I (b. 1972) learned the "catch a tiger" version, and that is what Casper has learned too. I didn't realized there had been a racist version (using the n-word where I have tiger) in the US prior to the 1960s until I read about it in a children's book when I was about 10 (in the book, a child notes that it used to be said that way but now they realized it was wrong.)

It's fascinating to me that my kid learned this rhyme from other kids on the playground, and I'd bet that most of the time these things are passed down by the children - it's not like anybody's mom sits them down in kindergarten and says, "Okay! I's time to learn counting-out rhymes!" So, since "eenie meenie" is documented as far back as 1815, and in close to its present form in 1850, that's many, many generations of schoolkids passing it along.

(I did teach her Miss Mary Mack, but she's picked up a hand-clap rhyme I don't know.)

Comments

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

I was just talking to somebody recently about playground rhymes and noted that I had taught Emmett:

My eyes have seen the glory
of the burning of the school
We have tortured every teacher
We have broken every rule
We hung the principal
From the flagpole at High Noon
The School is burning down!

Glory, glory Halleluah!
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Met her at the door
With a loaded .44
and my Teacher ain't teaching
No more.

(Sorry my teacher friends.)

Also:

Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho!
It's off to school we go
with razor blades and hand grenades
Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho!
Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho!

There was apparently an anti-authoritarian strain in my elementary school.

I also remember girls at my school going through a period of being obsessed with cat's cradles and various rhymes associated with those.

[gingerk.livejournal.com]

My elementary school:

On top of old Smoky
All covered with mud
I saw my poor teacher
All covered with blood.
A knife in her stomach
An axe in her head
I had a suspicion
My teacher was dead.

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember that one. There were a lot of variations on "On Top of Old Smokey."

[gingerk.livejournal.com]

You probably remember this one too:

Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher meat
Amputated horse's feet
Toasted little birdy's feet
French fried eyeballs swimming in a sea of blood
And me without my spoon.

This is how I remember it, but google tells me there were either many regional variations or many failing memories.

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

Ahem.

Great green gobs of
greasy, grimy gopher meat
chopped up baby parakeet
mutilated monkey feet

[gingerk.livejournal.com]

After singing a few rounds of this, I realized it's "Amputated horse's meat.

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember something along the lines of both of those...and I was a kid who generally LIKED school and her teachers!

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I knew your first one (and thought nothing of it - symbolic violence and actual violence being basically unconnected). I somehow doubt it flies in the modern era.