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

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

I am sooo fascinated by this stuff! It's so hard to research!

[zmayhem.livejournal.com]

Born in 1968, I also never knew about anything but "catch a tiger" until reading about it in a book long after I'd stopped using the rhyme at all.

English nursery rhyme scholars Iona and Peter Opie published a great collection of playground rhymes in 1993, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, called I Saw Esau. It's an excellent, delicious book. And, Googling around, I just found this 1993 interview with Iona Opie and Sendak right after it was published.

[susanw.livejournal.com]

Our version was a mix of ones from the wikipedia article, basically:

Eeny, meeny, miny moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers make him pay,
Fifty dollars every day.
My momma told me to pick the very best one in the world
And you are NOT IT.

By late elementary school you could get into debates over whether you were supposed to point to a new person per word or per syllable.

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

That rhyme made so much more sense to me once I learned there was an older, racist version. As a child, I was always all "why am I trying to catch a tiger? Won't the tiger eat me? Tigers are scary! And why is it just hollering instead of roaring and/or ripping my head off? This all seems like a very bad plan!"

[veejane.livejournal.com]

It's weird how many stories and songs and chants in American culture have been "scrubbed" to remove icky racist rhetoric. Like, I was 33 before I had any idea that "The Yellow Rose of Texas" was meant to refer to a real (mixed-race) person! I mean, I am not from Texas, but.

Wikipedia reports that the "ten little Indians" rhyme from which Agatha Christie made a novel title is in the process of becoming "ten little soldiers" or (incongruously, considering the DEATH and DESTRUCTION) "ten little teddy bears."

Sometimes, bowdlerization is hilarious and pointless and annoying. And then sometimes you're like, Yes, please hide that from me, thank you very much.

[sail-aweigh.livejournal.com]

I'm old enough I learned both ways as a child. I can't remember which one I learned first, but I can tell you around the time I quit using the one with the n-word and that was 5th grade (1967), when I had an actual black classmate. Before that, it really didn't seem to be any different in my mind and I was finally at an age where a growing social conscience made me aware of the badness. It was a very interesting time to be growing up, to see the growing awareness and results of the civil rights movement.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I learned the racist version when I was a kid at school, 1960-ish. The first time I repeated it to my mother I was specifically told to never use that word again.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Andy was born in 1969, and during his childhood in rural northern Michigan, kids still used the racist version. He says that suddenly one day in junior high, he actually thought about the words that were coming out of his mouth and was like "Jesus Christ, I can't say *that*!"

[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.

[mightyurchin.livejournal.com]

I learned it as "catch a piggie."