And in 1966,
in an article in American Anthropologist, Robbins Burling compared nursery
rhymes in English, Chinese, and Bengkulu in some detail and found them all
to have a four-line, four-beats-per-line structure.
in an article in American Anthropologist, Robbins Burling compared nursery
rhymes in English, Chinese, and Bengkulu in some detail and found them all
to have a four-line, four-beats-per-line structure.
Childens - Folklore
Play is
itself a caricatural or schematic activity ("galumphing" as some have called
it), and when it moves verbally it breeds analogous and elliptic usages of lan-
guage perhaps familiar only to those who are a part of the "secret" commu-
nity. Thus the ellipsis may serve to mask what is going on from those who
are not members of the play group. Perhaps more important, the ellipsis helps
to establish the players as a play community (McMahon 1993).
In the chapters that follow, Sullivan introduces us to children's songs
and rhymes, the latter of which he prefers to think of as poems, because they
resemble the poetic character of the ancient oral traditions of the world. He
distinguishes here also the tradition of parental nursery lore (lullabies) from
the traditions of children themselves (game lore), which in adolescence in-
cludes parodies of nursery lore. He categorizes children's rhymes in terms
of the functions they fulfill in children's groups for legislating outcomes, as
an expression of power relationships between children, for making judgments
about each other, and for humor's sake. In all of this material the formative
role of the verse is the establishment and maintenance of the peer group in
its antithetical relationship to adult conventions; in particular, the use of
phonology for the political purposes of childhood subversion rings out loud
and clear. It is intriguing to think of the subculture of childhood moving
against its adult overlords with a phonological armamentarium.
Roemer's work on riddles benefits from the sociolinguistic tradition
to which we have referred above. Those who work within this tradition in
this Sourcebook are generally at an advantage from a systematic and schol-
arly perspective in the interpretation of verbal folklore. In addition, works
on riddling are themselves a well-established tradition of study within folk-
lore and anthropology yielding a rich and suggestive array of cross-cultural
as well as modern examples. What is even more important is that Roemer
supplements the work of Hughes in showing riddling sessions to be an on-
going achievement at any moment and not merely a reflex of tradition. In-
deed tradition is the historical context of the semantic field from which the
social construction of the riddling occasion begins. As Denzin argues,
children's worlds of play are "not just given or handed down; rather they
are constructed worlds that are interpreted, negotiated, argued over, debated
about, compromised" (1977, 173). It is a contrast between papers presented
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? ? throughout this sourcebook that those who deal only with recorded folk-
lore necessarily make folklore appear to be a matter of tradition, while those
who have gotten their material directly from children's behaviors see folk-
lore very much as a matter of life construction. Newell's paradox may owe
some of its power to the difference between these approaches to scholarship.
Tucker deals with children's narratives and legends and in doing so
clearly indicates some of the enthusiasm that adult collectors borrow from
their child informants. Indeed her chapter is in some ways most valuable for
her own "contagious" involvement with her subject matter. She also man-
ages to blend an interdisciplinary tolerance for psychological studies of
children's stories with a more folkloristic analysis of the traditional tales and
legends that she and others have collected. That "psychological" explana-
tions should serve mainly for the stories of younger children and folkloris-
tic explanations for the tales and legends of older children seems largely to
be an accident of scholarly history. What Tucker's essay does demonstrate
is that although oral storytelling does not compare in its strength among chil-
dren with the transmission of games, jokes, and so forth, it is nevertheless
still more alive than one would expect from what goes on in schools. Lit-
eracy has diminished but not entirely quelled the traditions of child-trans-
mitted stories even in the urban middle class.
With Jorgensen's essay on pranks, the verbal subculture of the first three
chapters in this section begins to take on a more physically antithetical char-
acter and with it a cultural seriousness perhaps lacking in the others. Unlike
rhymes, riddles, and tales, pranks overflow into adult culture in an intention-
ally disruptive fashion. This is partly due to their practical rather than their
verbal character, and partly to the older age of the perpetrators. Jorgensen's
central thesis is that pranks, tricks, teases, and taunts are about victimization,
some of which are malevolent and deceptive and some of which is straight-
forward and benevolent. More important, however, she describes their roles
as kinds of communication. Her article brings into the forefront some of the
less pleasant aspects of the culture of childhood. In thinking of children's folk-
lore as the material for the politics of childhood we need to accept that there
is often nothing very romantic about these politics.
In sum, in these four chapters we have a sample of the concerns of
children. Here are some of the phenomena that are part and parcel of the
way in which they establish relationships among themselves and in so do-
ing differentiate themselves from other age groups in modern society. As with
any subculture, some of their effort goes into building their own culture and
some of it into distancing their culture from the conventional adult culture
around them.
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? ? 7 SONGS, POEMS, AND RHYMES'
C. W. Sullivan III
Poetry and song came early in the development of Western civilization. Much
of what we have left to us of the earliest literary works-Beowulf or Homer's
Iliad and Odyssey-were probably recited in chanted or sung versions long
before they were written down, their forms and places fixed forever in liter-
ary history. Moreover, many of the narratives that came later, whether they
appeared first in oral or written form, were poetic rather than prose. So, too,
poetry and song come early in the lives of children. Before they begin to at-
tend school and even before they begin to associate with others of their own
age, they encounter poetry and song. Although much folklore is passed on
from older to younger members within a generation, whether it is a genera-
tion of college students or a generation of "neighborhood kids," the first
traditional poetry and song a child hears comes from another generation.
The child's mother, usually, but more often these days the father, too, talk,
chant, and sing to the child almost from the moment he or she makes an
appearance in the world. Much of that chanting and singing is functional;
that is, it is used by the parent to soothe a restless child, to help the child
drift off to sleep, or to interest the active or fussy child. One parent that I
know sang the alphabet to her older child when he was small so that he
would hold still while she changed his diapers.
Much of what is sung to these infants is not traditional in the truest
sense of the word. For example, because it is most often associated with
school-day school, kindergarten, or first grade-few will argue that the al-
phabet song is a traditional folk song. And many of the other poems or songs
recited or sung to children have known, often literary, sources. Folklorists,
at least, know that "Mary Had A Little Lamb" was composed by Mrs. Sa-
rah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830, and many of the other popular rhymes
recited to young children-"Little Miss Muffett," "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin
Eater," "Little Jack Horner," and the rest-can all be found, with some small
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? ? variation from text to text, in any Mother Goose collection. But there are
two other considerations here. First, this material, even though its sources
are known, is often passed on in the same dynamic way that all folklore is
passed on. Parents often recite poems or sing songs to their children that were
recited or sung to them a generation back by their own parents; all of the
parents busily passing on "Mary Had A Little Lamb" are transmitting it in
a traditional way to their children and, perhaps indirectly, to future genera-
tions. And if there is a Mother Goose collection of nursery rhymes in the
house, it is probably consulted by the parents for additional material or it
is available for the pictures that will amuse children when they are being read
to or when they are looking at the book themselves. 2 A second, and more
indirect, consideration here is that the material the child learns is not for-
gotten as soon as the infant or tot stage is past. Children will remember this
material and use it, for example, as the basis for parodies in future child-
hood years. And the rather innocent Mary and her lamb becomes
Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a bear;
I've often seen her little lamb,
But I've never seen her bear. 3
In oral tradition, of course, the "bear" of the last line of the parody is heard
and understood as the homonymous "bare. " Thus, there is a great body of
material which, if not originally of the folk, is certainly passed on in the same
manner as any other traditional materials and which does, shortly, become
intertwined (as in the parodying of "Mary Had A Little Lamb") with mate-
rials (in this case, the parody) that are generated within and transmitted from
older to younger members of the folk group-children.
It is also important to note here that the parents are teaching by ex-
ample. That is, when they recite or sing to the child, the child gains an aware-
ness of poetry and song as genres and learns about rhyme and rhythm, stan-
zaic or episodic structure, and all of the other technical details, inherent and
unnamed, of oral performance. The child will then be able to recite, chant,
and/or sing his or her own material at a later date. Thus equipped, the child
ventures forth into a peer group where much of the activity will involve, if
not be governed by, poetry and song.
SONGS AND RHYMES AND OTHER THINGS
Organizing and studying almost anything in the humanities according to
generic classification can be quite difficult because generic boundaries are
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? ? never absolute and seldom firm. At best, generic categorization allows us
to group similar things together on a temporary basis, recognizing all the
while that almost all of those things could just as easily be placed in one or
more other categories. This is especially true of folklore, where songs and
legends and tales often blend together, where foodways are sometimes in-
separable from festivals, and where songs and poems seem to be a part of
almost everything.
Traditional gatherings and festivals and celebrations almost always
include songs, and if the official song is not traditional among the folk cel-
ebrating the event, there is often a parody of the official song. "Happy Birth-
day," though perhaps not a traditional folk song, is certainly passed on to
children in traditional ways as a part of the birthday celebration, and there
is no question that the parody of the birthday song,
Happy Birthday to you,
You live in a zoo,
You look like a monkey,
And you smell like one, too.
is the property of the children who sing it, and others like it, after or in lieu
of the official song. The same situation occurs on other days as well. On St.
Valentine's Day, one can hear innumerable parodies of "Roses are red . . . "
initiated by and passed on among children, and the parody of that well-
known rhyme is seldom as complimentary as the original. While children
are playing at having a wedding, or attending the event itself, they are likely
to sing or chant
Here comes the bride,
Short, fat, and wide,
Look at her wobble,
From side to side.
And should a child try to pull an April Fool joke on someone on April 2, he
or she is likely to be told, "April Fool has gone past/You're the biggest fool
at last. "
Children's games, too, often include rhymes and songs. In fact, be-
fore the game is started, there may be a counting-out rhyme to determine
who bears the onus of being the first one to be "it. " Of all game rhymes,
probably the jump-rope rhyme has been the most widely collected. The
Knapps suggest that, while jump-rope rhymes exist about almost every topic
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? ? (school, movie stars, politicians, history, bumblebees), the largest group con-
cerns familiar domestic situations:
Mable, Mable, set the table,
Don't forget the salt, vinegar, mustard,
Pepper! [the signal to turn the rope as fast as possible]
Or,
Mix a pancake, stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan.
Fry the pancake, toss the pancake,
Catch me if you can. (Knapp and Knapp 1976, 112)
There are also numerous songs and rhymes for clapping games and for ball-
bouncing games. For all of these, the song or rhyme serves to regulate the
rhythm so that the rope turners and the jumper, the clappers, or the ball-
bouncers, are all operating in unison. Some other songs, songs that date back
to the play-party games of the Colonial Puritans, actually structure the dra-
matic action of the game itself. In a game called "Marriage," a boy and a
girl pledged their love to each other in song, passed under an arch of their
friends' arms, declared themselves married, and then kissed (Newell 1963
[1883], 59). More well known and still collectable from children outside
schools or day-care are "London Bridge" and "Ring Around the Rosie. " And
there are many others.
Simpler play situations may also be structured by songs or rhymes.
Among a child's first experiences with rhyme may be "This Little Piggy Went
to Market," a rhyme taught by the parent to establish a routine in which
the child is entertained and also in which the child is encouraged, as he or
she gets a bit older, to participate. Later, a child may be taught this verse:
Here is the church,
Here is the steeple,
Open the doors,
And out come the people.
In this routine, various hand and finger positions are used to represent the
church, the church with a steeple, and the people coming out of the church.
Although much of children's riddling seems to be moving away from
the true riddle and toward the riddle joke, there are still rhymed riddles and
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? ? catch questions that can be collected. One of the early riddles a child learns
is a rhymed catch question:
Railroad crossing
Without any cars;
How do you spell it
Without any rs?
A similar riddle from Australia asks
I saw Esau
Sitting on a seesaw,
How many Esaus is that? (I. Turner, Factor, and Lowenstein 1978,
103)
The first line of that riddle is certainly familiar to folklorists as the begin-
ning of the title of I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth by lona and
Peter Opie (1947). In their Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959),
the Opies recorded more than a dozen different rhymed riddles collected
from British children. Riddles in this group included the Sphinx's riddle to
Oedipus as told by a fifteen-year-old girl; "four riddles which were known
in Charles I's time; and four which, although apparently traditional, do not
seem to have been previously recorded, for they are not included in Archer
Taylor's comprehensive collection" (Opie and Opie 1959, 76).
The same power that poetry and song have always had in religious
ritual manifests itself in children's rhymes and songs that are a part of their
superstitions or folk beliefs. Small children who want to play outside dur-
ing inclement weather know enough to chant
Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day,
Little wants to play.
When it is not raining, the children walking along the sidewalk know that
stepping on a crack can "break your mother's back. " And there are many,
many jump-rope rhymes that, besides setting the pace for the game, are also
ways of divining the future. There are jump-rope divinations to reveal the
name of a girl's boyfriend or future mate, the number of rooms in the house
the girl will live in when she is grown and married, the number of children
she will have, and much more.
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? ? COLLECTORS AND CRITICS
The initial or seminal studies of children's folklore recognized or assumed
that rhymes are a part of games, celebrations, superstitions, and the like.
W. W. Newell's Games and Songs of American Children (1883), Lady Alice
Gomme's Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1894-98),
and Norman Douglas's London Street Games (1916) all contain rhymes-
although rhymes are mentioned in none of the titles and only Newell's title
mentions songs. Of that era, Henry Bolton's Counting-Out Rhymes of Chil-
dren (1888) is one of the few that addresses itself directly to rhyme, even
though the rhymes are, in essence, rhymes that have to do with games.
More recent collections-with or without any accompanying criti-
cism-have followed this lead. Popular and well-known collections of
children's folklore such as lona and Peter Opie's I Saw Esau: Traditional
Rhymes of Youth (1947) and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(1959), Sandra McCosh's Children's Humour (1976), Mary and Herbert
Knapp's One Potato, Two Potato (1976), Turner's Cinderella Dressed in
Yella (1969), lona and Peter Opie's The Singing Game (1985), and Amanda
Dargan and Steven Zeitlin's City Play (1990) have tended to present rhymes
as a part of or related to some other subgenre of children's folklore, espe-
cially games, and have commented on the rhymes themselves, as rhymes, in
only very limited ways. Turner, for example, suggests that rhymes associ-
ated with games tend to live longer than rhymes of amusement because
"game-rhymes are required to regulate the games themselves, while amuse-
ment-rhymes are able to respond quickly to cultural changes and the events
of the day-and are at least in part required to do so" (Turner et al. 1978,
162). And the articles of children's rhymes and songs that have appeared in
various journals have, by and large, followed suit.
We know, however, that the spoken syllables "na-na-na-na-na" mean
very little to a child; whereas, those same syllables, chanted or sung with
the proper inflections, have the power to enrage that same child. More com-
plex versions of the same taunt, such as "Johnny kissed a girl" or "Johnny
is a fairy" seem easier to account for. The name-calling or action-attribu-
tion could certainly annoy or anger "Johnny," but that does not account for
the ability of the nonsense syllables to do the same thing. It is too easy to
say that the hearer imagines the unarticulated words; there must be some-
thing in the intonation, the rhythm, the actual notes themselves, that con-
tributes to this effect.
A few critics have tried to assess the rhymes as rhymes, and these crit-
ics have, at the very least, come up with some interesting findings. In an
afterword to A Rocket in My Pocket, Carl Withers suggests that the rhymes
150 SONGS, POEMS, AND RHYMES
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? ? are important precisely because they are rhymes: "Through the ancient de-
vice of rhyme, and the still more ancient ones of furious alliteration and asso-
nance, they have found a way to comment incisively, and often in a very up-
to-date fashion, upon the world of adults and upon other children" (Withers
1948, 204). Dorothy Howard, the very next year, commented on the "pro-
gressive intricacy of the rhythm patterns" of ball-bouncing rhymes collected
from chronologically sequential age groups (Howard 1949, 166).
And in 1966,
in an article in American Anthropologist, Robbins Burling compared nursery
rhymes in English, Chinese, and Bengkulu in some detail and found them all
to have a four-line, four-beats-per-line structure. Burling suggests that more
in the way of comparative metrical analysis needs to be done before the uni-
versality of this pattern can be ascertained, but he does speculate about what
such a universality might imply. "If these patterns prove to be universal, I can
see no explanation except that of our common humanity. We may simply be
the kind of animal that is predestined not only to speak, but also, on certain
occasions, to force language into a recurrent pattern of beats and lines"
(Burling 1966, 1435). Burling wonders if this translinguistic patterning might
also be true, at least in part, of "sophisticated verse. " More recently, efforts
like Howard Gardner's articles, especially "Metaphors and Modalities: How
Children Project Polar Adjectives onto Diverse Domains" and "Style and Sen-
sitivity in Children," and Peter Jusczyk's doctoral dissertation, "Rhymes and
Reasons: The Child's Appreciation of Aspects of Poetic Form," have dealt
specifically with the poetic devices children use and appreciate, devices whose
technical functions children will not be able to understand until much later
in their lives. In American Children's Folklore (1988), Simon Bronner treats
songs and rhymes in their own chapters and discusses the social and cultural
functions of the various subgenres, especially gross rhymes and song parodies,
arguing that children's folklore adapts to changing times and comments on
them (page 27).
RHYMES AND SONGS: A FUNCTIONAL BREAKDOWN
The definitive work on the nature of rhyme and the manner in which
children's traditional rhymed and metered materials achieve their effects has
yet to be written. Until it is, perhaps the closest we, as critics, can come to
an understanding of how poems and songs work is to observe their effects
on the people who use them. In other words, what we can do is look at the
ways in which poems and songs function as children's folklore.
As I have already mentioned, many rhymes and songs have been col-
lected as parts of children's games where they function as legislation. That
is, many of the rhymes and songs found in games are there as the legislative
'5'
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? ? structure; rhymes and songs are used to set up the game and get it under
way, to provide the rules for the game as it proceeds, and in some cases, to
determine the winner of the game when it is concluding. Before many games
can get started, it is often necessary to decide who will start the action-
who will be the first jump-rope jumper and who will be the twirlers, who
will be the first "it" for hide-and-go-seek or tag, or who will make the first
move. Often this is determined through a counting-out rhyme. A counting-
out rhyme is necessary in this situation because the first person to be "it" is
doing so freely and not as a penalty for having been caught or having his or
her hiding place spotted. The counting-out rhyme provides an impartial way
of selecting the first "it. " And some critics have suggested that the count-
ing-out rhyme dates back to much more serious and ancient sacrificial situ-
ations in which the person chosen was a literal sacrifice in a religious ritual.
In any case, the children accept the results of the counting-out rhyme as
impartial and impersonal so that there is no suggestion that the first "it" is
of any less stature than the other people in the game.
As the game gets started, a chant may be employed to state some
of the rules. When the "it" person for hide-and-go-seek finishes counting,
he may add, still in the chanting rhythm of the count, "Anybody around
my goal is it! " This means that no one can stand right beside the spot
where the counter is standing and tag the goal just as the counter finishes.
Should the counter forget to add that qualification, however, that rule does
not apply.
Any game may contain everything from the occasional rule-making
rhyme to a rhyme or song that continues as long as the game is played.
Within chasing and hiding games, one can occasionally hear rhymes like
"One, two, three/Get off my father's apple tree" (Knapp and Knapp 1976,
29). This two-line rhyme is designed to get a "base-hugger" to leave the
safety he is sticking too close to. If the "it" in hide-and-go-seek stays around
the goal too long, he is likely to hear the chant, "Goal sticker, goal sticker/
is a goal sticker. " These rhymes and chants, however, appear only
sporadically in chasing and hiding games; in games of jumping rope, rhymes
and songs often last for the duration of the game. It must be noted that these
rhymes and songs may have only one or two verses and then a long enu-
meration that continues until the jumper misses and is, temporarily anyway,
out. Rhymes like
Cinderella, dressed in yella
Went downtown to buy some mustard.
On her way her girdle busted,
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? ? How may people were disgusted?
1, 2, 3, 4,. . . (Turner et al. 1978, 14)
could, conceivably, go on forever, counting off the number of times the per-
son jumping makes it successfully over the rope. In fact, the twirlers usu-
ally increase the speed as the game goes on so that the jumper will eventu-
ally miss. There are, of course, other rhymes that have a specific duration,
and the jumper is required to stop when the rhyme is over and exchange
places with one of the twirlers or one of the waiting bystanders/observers.
In addition to jump rope there are other games that have rhymes or
songs that structure them and also continue for the duration of the game. Many
clapping and ball-bouncing games use rhymes or songs, and the familiar songs,
"London Bridge" and "Ring Around the Rosie," last all through the games
they structure. Most of these children's games do not have over-all winners
or losers. They generally conclude when most of the participants feel like stop-
ping rather than at some predetermined point in the game. External factors
such as darkness, homework, supper, and bedtime are much more likely to
conclude a game than the crowning of an absolute winner. In the case of a
game like jump rope, however, the number of jumps totaled up in the chant
might suggest that one jumper is better than the others.
A second category of children's rhymes and songs, and one which is
very close to the first category, contains rhymes and songs used for power.
Certainly teasing rhymes like "na-na-na-na-na" give the user some power
over the one at whom the rhyme is directed, and in its more complex ver-
sions, like "Nanny, Nanny, boo-boo/Stick your head in doo-doo," its power
to make the victim angry is impressive. As children get older, they acquire a
number of rhymes which give them the power to physically abuse another
child. To be caught in one of these situations, the victim must have never
heard the rhyme before, and so these tricks are often played on newcomers.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
Went down to the river to swim;
Adam and Eve got drowned.
Who was left?
When the victim answers this question-as he or she must, or lose consid-
erable face in the group-the person who said the rhyme can then pinch
away. Only a slightly more subtle rhyme instructs the victim to "Look up,
look down/ Look at my thumb/ Gee, you're dumb. " This rhyme, all by it-
self, is not a rhyme of physical abuse, but a later variation of it says
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? ? This is my finger,
This is my thumb,
This is my hand,
And here it comes.
As the last line is recited, the reciter steps closer and slaps the victim on the
cheek. Other tricks play on the word "duck," so that the victim thinks the
word refers to a bird while the trickster interprets it as an instruction; when
the victim does not duck, he or she is slapped by an immediately apologetic
trickster who says, "But I told you to duck. "
The fascinating aspect of these rhymes of physical abuse is that sel-
dom is a fight started. The victim realizes that he or she has been tricked.
The victim also realizes that there is a whole crowd watching the trick and
waiting for a reaction. The only thing the victim can do at the moment is
take it like a "good sport. " He or she may plot revenge and get back at the
tormentor with a similar trick at a later date, but the victim is more likely
to use the trick that was played on him or her to trick someone else. The
victim thus becomes an insider looking for a new outsider to prey upon.
There are various other rhymes used by one child to establish his su-
periority over another. Among young children, tricking someone into look-
ing at or for something that is not there is followed by this rhyme:
Made you look,
You dirty crook;
You stole your mother's
Pocketbook.
In general, victims seem much more willing participants in their own down-
fall when they are made to say a line or response that will eventually reflect
badly on them. At the end of one such series, the victim-after saying, "I
am a gold key," "I am a silver key," and "I am a brass key"-must then
announce, "I am a "monk key" (that is, a monkey). Once again, the victim
must accept the humiliation and wait to play the trick on someone else.
A third category of rhymes and songs suggests quite strongly that
children develop a sense of what is or is not acceptable at an early age, and
when they see another child acting in an unacceptable way, they often have
a rhyme or song of judgment for the occasion. One group of judgmental
rhymes is directed at children who are incorrectly dressed. Should someone
not have assembled his or her clothing carefully, he or she might hear
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? ? I see London,
I see France,
I see 's
Underpants.
Exposed underwear and open zippers seem to be primary targets for this
rhyme and others like it, but the clothing standards that such rhymes rein-
force are adult standards. The child who uses this rhyme is aware of "proper
dress" and is passing judgment or trying to correct the child who is unaware
of the standards or who has slipped.
There are other ways a child can violate the group's standards, and
there are rhymes for such occasions. A child who has been discovered to be
a liar is quite likely to hear "Liar, Liar/Pants on fire/Hanging from the tele-
phone wire. " The liar has violated the group's trust, and the insulting rhyme
is a judgment on the liar's actions. Other children whose actions set them
apart from the group-notably tattletales, crybabies, and teachers' pets-
will also have insulting rhymes directed at them. The child soon learns not
to act this way if he or she wants to remain a member in good standing.
Children with noticeable differences have always been singled out by
the group. In the past, children with glasses or braces were persons of ridi-
cule to their peers; that, however, seems to have changed, and braces are even
becoming a status symbol in certain parts of the country. Other obvious dif-
ferences, especially the physical ones, still attract attention. Adults who were
overweight children may never forget
Fatty, fatty, two by four,
Couldn't get through the bathroom door,
So he did it on the floor.
"Skinny" children, at the opposite end of the size spectrum, get similar treat-
ment, as do redheads and children who are especially funny/ugly.
This quickness to recognize differences makes children particularly
susceptible to racial and ethnic prejudice. To be sure, they are quick to pick
up and promulgate views that their parents have (so that there are staunch
eight-year-old Democrats and Republicans), but their recognition of physi-
cal and behavioral differences, already noted, suggests that the rhymes and
songs about blacks, Jews, and Asians that the Knapps collected for One Po-
tato, Two Potato (1976, 190-203) function only partly as racial material.
Some of the impetus for the transmission of these materials must come from
the group's sense of itself as a group, a sense that is certainly developed, in
155
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? ? part, by recognizing others that are not a part of the group-and racial dif-
ferences are easy to recognize. This does not make these rhymes of preju-
dice any more acceptable, but it does enable us to understand a bit more
clearly why children are so quick to use them. 4
The fourth category, which may well be the largest and which also
crosses into other categories from time to time, consists of rhymes and songs
that contain wit and humor. A great deal of material in this category is de-
rived, ultimately, from the adult world. Children seem to have little respect
for even the most traditional nursery rhymes, the most serious television
commercials, or the most sacred songs. Parodies of "Mary Had A Little
Lamb," as well as parodies of other nursery rhymes abound. Television com-
mercials extolling the effectiveness or the quality of some new or well-known
product become rhymes or jingles disparaging the product. In the 1950s, the
Pepsi-Cola slogan, "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot," became
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot,
Smells like vinegar, tastes like snot;
Pour it in the kitchen sink,
Five minutes later, it begins to stink.
And more recently, commentaries concerning the use of Comet cleanser have
been collected.
Comet, it makes your mouth turn green;
Comet, it tastes like kerosene;
Comet, it makes you vomit;
So get Comet and vomit today.
Not only do children seem quite willing to parody television commercials,
but they also seem quite willing, unlike most adults, to make jokes about
"snot" and "vomit. "
Songs, too, are readily parodied by children and the children do not
seem to be at all upset that songs adults consider important-whether secular
political songs or sacred church music-are being violated. And so, "The
Star-Spangled Banner" becomes
Oh, say can you see,
Any bedbugs on me?
If you can, take a few,
'Cause I got them from you.
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? ? And there are similar parodies of "America," "Yankee Doodle," and
"America the Beautiful. " Church music is certainly not immune from parody.
Generations of school children have sung variations of a parody of "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic" through which they get some psychological
revenge on the educational system by describing "The Burning of the School"
and enthusiastically singing one variation or another of the chorus:
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
I bopped her on the bean
With a rotten tangerine,
And her teeth went marching on.
Similar parodies exist of "We Three Kings," "Jesus Loves Me," "Hark! The
Herald Angels Sing," and many more. In the same vein, there are parodies,
in the appropriate rhyme and meter, of various prayers, from "Grace" be-
fore meals to "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. " The children's answer to the
old cliche "Is nothing sacred? " would seem to be a resounding "No! "
Another large segment of humorous rhyme and song is also derived,
albeit indirectly, from the adult world. Children begin to learn quite early
that there are "unacceptable" or "dirty" words in the English language,
words that they should be especially careful not to say in the presence of
adults. That, of course, makes those words all that much more delicious to
say-if only within the peer group. In One Potato, Two Potato, the Knapps
place these rhymes and songs in a larger category that they call "shockers"
(Knapp and Knapp 1976, 179-89). And it is a shock to many adults to dis-
cover that children know and joke about body parts, bodily functions, sexual
differences, and sexual activities. Art Linkletter may not have realized it, but
kids will also say the grossest things. "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy
Gopher Guts," a song that usually ends with the line "And me without a
spoon," is not a song that most adults would enjoy; children-especially boys
(but that may be role-playing)-love it. And there are any number of rhymes,
some of them parodies of nursery rhymes, that focus on bodily functions or
the products thereof:
In 1944,
The Monkey climbed the door;
The door split,
And the Monkey shit,
In 1944.
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? ? And what Jack burned when he missed his jump over the candlestick is al-
most too painful to think about. Adults seem to have conveniently forgot-
ten that they ever knew and passed on such materials, and when it comes
to the rhymes and songs about sexual matters, they "can't imagine" how
the children know such things. The Knapps collected the following parody/
shocker from a ten-year-old: "Now I lay her on the bed/I pray to God I'll
use my head. " And the following song parody, also collected by the Knapps,
exhibits a somewhat more sophisticated knowledge:
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
My Bonnie lies over the sea,
My daddy lies over my mommy,
And that's how they got little me.
(Knapp and Knapp 1976, 172, 185)
The children, for their part, are more perceptive than the adults concerning
this humor; the children are aware of how the adults would react and, there-
fore, keep these materials generally among themselves.
There are a great many reasons why children find humor in these
materials, and defiance of adult prohibitions is probably the least important
reason of all. Certainly one of the reasons children use these words (and a
reason they will later be eager to try cigarettes, alcohol, and sex) is to feel
like adults. By using these materials, the children are like the adults whom
they have very likely heard saying the same words or talking about the same
topics. In addition, sexual humor-whether a parody or a song or rhyme in
its own right-is a way of dealing with a topic of considerable anxiety in
such a way that the anxiety is largely removed. Laughter, after all, is a way
of dealing with fear and nervousness as well as a way of expressing delight.
There is, in fact, a considerable amount of work to be done in mapping the
development of children's sexual humor, work that should show that the
humor changes-in topic as well as understanding-as the child grows older
and more aware of first his or her own sexuality and then sexuality in rela-
tion to the sexuality of other people.
The last category is, of course, miscellaneous, and in it are lumped
rhymes and songs that might be considered in one or more of the other cat-
egories but do deserve some mention on their own. Certainly there are hu-
morous parodies and rhymes of judgment among autograph rhymes, but the
occurrence of the specific item, the autograph rhyme, is the result of an
autographing situation rather than a joke-telling session. And many of the
rhymes, like the one that follows, could be nothing but autograph rhymes:
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itself a caricatural or schematic activity ("galumphing" as some have called
it), and when it moves verbally it breeds analogous and elliptic usages of lan-
guage perhaps familiar only to those who are a part of the "secret" commu-
nity. Thus the ellipsis may serve to mask what is going on from those who
are not members of the play group. Perhaps more important, the ellipsis helps
to establish the players as a play community (McMahon 1993).
In the chapters that follow, Sullivan introduces us to children's songs
and rhymes, the latter of which he prefers to think of as poems, because they
resemble the poetic character of the ancient oral traditions of the world. He
distinguishes here also the tradition of parental nursery lore (lullabies) from
the traditions of children themselves (game lore), which in adolescence in-
cludes parodies of nursery lore. He categorizes children's rhymes in terms
of the functions they fulfill in children's groups for legislating outcomes, as
an expression of power relationships between children, for making judgments
about each other, and for humor's sake. In all of this material the formative
role of the verse is the establishment and maintenance of the peer group in
its antithetical relationship to adult conventions; in particular, the use of
phonology for the political purposes of childhood subversion rings out loud
and clear. It is intriguing to think of the subculture of childhood moving
against its adult overlords with a phonological armamentarium.
Roemer's work on riddles benefits from the sociolinguistic tradition
to which we have referred above. Those who work within this tradition in
this Sourcebook are generally at an advantage from a systematic and schol-
arly perspective in the interpretation of verbal folklore. In addition, works
on riddling are themselves a well-established tradition of study within folk-
lore and anthropology yielding a rich and suggestive array of cross-cultural
as well as modern examples. What is even more important is that Roemer
supplements the work of Hughes in showing riddling sessions to be an on-
going achievement at any moment and not merely a reflex of tradition. In-
deed tradition is the historical context of the semantic field from which the
social construction of the riddling occasion begins. As Denzin argues,
children's worlds of play are "not just given or handed down; rather they
are constructed worlds that are interpreted, negotiated, argued over, debated
about, compromised" (1977, 173). It is a contrast between papers presented
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? ? throughout this sourcebook that those who deal only with recorded folk-
lore necessarily make folklore appear to be a matter of tradition, while those
who have gotten their material directly from children's behaviors see folk-
lore very much as a matter of life construction. Newell's paradox may owe
some of its power to the difference between these approaches to scholarship.
Tucker deals with children's narratives and legends and in doing so
clearly indicates some of the enthusiasm that adult collectors borrow from
their child informants. Indeed her chapter is in some ways most valuable for
her own "contagious" involvement with her subject matter. She also man-
ages to blend an interdisciplinary tolerance for psychological studies of
children's stories with a more folkloristic analysis of the traditional tales and
legends that she and others have collected. That "psychological" explana-
tions should serve mainly for the stories of younger children and folkloris-
tic explanations for the tales and legends of older children seems largely to
be an accident of scholarly history. What Tucker's essay does demonstrate
is that although oral storytelling does not compare in its strength among chil-
dren with the transmission of games, jokes, and so forth, it is nevertheless
still more alive than one would expect from what goes on in schools. Lit-
eracy has diminished but not entirely quelled the traditions of child-trans-
mitted stories even in the urban middle class.
With Jorgensen's essay on pranks, the verbal subculture of the first three
chapters in this section begins to take on a more physically antithetical char-
acter and with it a cultural seriousness perhaps lacking in the others. Unlike
rhymes, riddles, and tales, pranks overflow into adult culture in an intention-
ally disruptive fashion. This is partly due to their practical rather than their
verbal character, and partly to the older age of the perpetrators. Jorgensen's
central thesis is that pranks, tricks, teases, and taunts are about victimization,
some of which are malevolent and deceptive and some of which is straight-
forward and benevolent. More important, however, she describes their roles
as kinds of communication. Her article brings into the forefront some of the
less pleasant aspects of the culture of childhood. In thinking of children's folk-
lore as the material for the politics of childhood we need to accept that there
is often nothing very romantic about these politics.
In sum, in these four chapters we have a sample of the concerns of
children. Here are some of the phenomena that are part and parcel of the
way in which they establish relationships among themselves and in so do-
ing differentiate themselves from other age groups in modern society. As with
any subculture, some of their effort goes into building their own culture and
some of it into distancing their culture from the conventional adult culture
around them.
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? ? 7 SONGS, POEMS, AND RHYMES'
C. W. Sullivan III
Poetry and song came early in the development of Western civilization. Much
of what we have left to us of the earliest literary works-Beowulf or Homer's
Iliad and Odyssey-were probably recited in chanted or sung versions long
before they were written down, their forms and places fixed forever in liter-
ary history. Moreover, many of the narratives that came later, whether they
appeared first in oral or written form, were poetic rather than prose. So, too,
poetry and song come early in the lives of children. Before they begin to at-
tend school and even before they begin to associate with others of their own
age, they encounter poetry and song. Although much folklore is passed on
from older to younger members within a generation, whether it is a genera-
tion of college students or a generation of "neighborhood kids," the first
traditional poetry and song a child hears comes from another generation.
The child's mother, usually, but more often these days the father, too, talk,
chant, and sing to the child almost from the moment he or she makes an
appearance in the world. Much of that chanting and singing is functional;
that is, it is used by the parent to soothe a restless child, to help the child
drift off to sleep, or to interest the active or fussy child. One parent that I
know sang the alphabet to her older child when he was small so that he
would hold still while she changed his diapers.
Much of what is sung to these infants is not traditional in the truest
sense of the word. For example, because it is most often associated with
school-day school, kindergarten, or first grade-few will argue that the al-
phabet song is a traditional folk song. And many of the other poems or songs
recited or sung to children have known, often literary, sources. Folklorists,
at least, know that "Mary Had A Little Lamb" was composed by Mrs. Sa-
rah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830, and many of the other popular rhymes
recited to young children-"Little Miss Muffett," "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin
Eater," "Little Jack Horner," and the rest-can all be found, with some small
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? ? variation from text to text, in any Mother Goose collection. But there are
two other considerations here. First, this material, even though its sources
are known, is often passed on in the same dynamic way that all folklore is
passed on. Parents often recite poems or sing songs to their children that were
recited or sung to them a generation back by their own parents; all of the
parents busily passing on "Mary Had A Little Lamb" are transmitting it in
a traditional way to their children and, perhaps indirectly, to future genera-
tions. And if there is a Mother Goose collection of nursery rhymes in the
house, it is probably consulted by the parents for additional material or it
is available for the pictures that will amuse children when they are being read
to or when they are looking at the book themselves. 2 A second, and more
indirect, consideration here is that the material the child learns is not for-
gotten as soon as the infant or tot stage is past. Children will remember this
material and use it, for example, as the basis for parodies in future child-
hood years. And the rather innocent Mary and her lamb becomes
Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a bear;
I've often seen her little lamb,
But I've never seen her bear. 3
In oral tradition, of course, the "bear" of the last line of the parody is heard
and understood as the homonymous "bare. " Thus, there is a great body of
material which, if not originally of the folk, is certainly passed on in the same
manner as any other traditional materials and which does, shortly, become
intertwined (as in the parodying of "Mary Had A Little Lamb") with mate-
rials (in this case, the parody) that are generated within and transmitted from
older to younger members of the folk group-children.
It is also important to note here that the parents are teaching by ex-
ample. That is, when they recite or sing to the child, the child gains an aware-
ness of poetry and song as genres and learns about rhyme and rhythm, stan-
zaic or episodic structure, and all of the other technical details, inherent and
unnamed, of oral performance. The child will then be able to recite, chant,
and/or sing his or her own material at a later date. Thus equipped, the child
ventures forth into a peer group where much of the activity will involve, if
not be governed by, poetry and song.
SONGS AND RHYMES AND OTHER THINGS
Organizing and studying almost anything in the humanities according to
generic classification can be quite difficult because generic boundaries are
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? ? never absolute and seldom firm. At best, generic categorization allows us
to group similar things together on a temporary basis, recognizing all the
while that almost all of those things could just as easily be placed in one or
more other categories. This is especially true of folklore, where songs and
legends and tales often blend together, where foodways are sometimes in-
separable from festivals, and where songs and poems seem to be a part of
almost everything.
Traditional gatherings and festivals and celebrations almost always
include songs, and if the official song is not traditional among the folk cel-
ebrating the event, there is often a parody of the official song. "Happy Birth-
day," though perhaps not a traditional folk song, is certainly passed on to
children in traditional ways as a part of the birthday celebration, and there
is no question that the parody of the birthday song,
Happy Birthday to you,
You live in a zoo,
You look like a monkey,
And you smell like one, too.
is the property of the children who sing it, and others like it, after or in lieu
of the official song. The same situation occurs on other days as well. On St.
Valentine's Day, one can hear innumerable parodies of "Roses are red . . . "
initiated by and passed on among children, and the parody of that well-
known rhyme is seldom as complimentary as the original. While children
are playing at having a wedding, or attending the event itself, they are likely
to sing or chant
Here comes the bride,
Short, fat, and wide,
Look at her wobble,
From side to side.
And should a child try to pull an April Fool joke on someone on April 2, he
or she is likely to be told, "April Fool has gone past/You're the biggest fool
at last. "
Children's games, too, often include rhymes and songs. In fact, be-
fore the game is started, there may be a counting-out rhyme to determine
who bears the onus of being the first one to be "it. " Of all game rhymes,
probably the jump-rope rhyme has been the most widely collected. The
Knapps suggest that, while jump-rope rhymes exist about almost every topic
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? ? (school, movie stars, politicians, history, bumblebees), the largest group con-
cerns familiar domestic situations:
Mable, Mable, set the table,
Don't forget the salt, vinegar, mustard,
Pepper! [the signal to turn the rope as fast as possible]
Or,
Mix a pancake, stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan.
Fry the pancake, toss the pancake,
Catch me if you can. (Knapp and Knapp 1976, 112)
There are also numerous songs and rhymes for clapping games and for ball-
bouncing games. For all of these, the song or rhyme serves to regulate the
rhythm so that the rope turners and the jumper, the clappers, or the ball-
bouncers, are all operating in unison. Some other songs, songs that date back
to the play-party games of the Colonial Puritans, actually structure the dra-
matic action of the game itself. In a game called "Marriage," a boy and a
girl pledged their love to each other in song, passed under an arch of their
friends' arms, declared themselves married, and then kissed (Newell 1963
[1883], 59). More well known and still collectable from children outside
schools or day-care are "London Bridge" and "Ring Around the Rosie. " And
there are many others.
Simpler play situations may also be structured by songs or rhymes.
Among a child's first experiences with rhyme may be "This Little Piggy Went
to Market," a rhyme taught by the parent to establish a routine in which
the child is entertained and also in which the child is encouraged, as he or
she gets a bit older, to participate. Later, a child may be taught this verse:
Here is the church,
Here is the steeple,
Open the doors,
And out come the people.
In this routine, various hand and finger positions are used to represent the
church, the church with a steeple, and the people coming out of the church.
Although much of children's riddling seems to be moving away from
the true riddle and toward the riddle joke, there are still rhymed riddles and
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? ? catch questions that can be collected. One of the early riddles a child learns
is a rhymed catch question:
Railroad crossing
Without any cars;
How do you spell it
Without any rs?
A similar riddle from Australia asks
I saw Esau
Sitting on a seesaw,
How many Esaus is that? (I. Turner, Factor, and Lowenstein 1978,
103)
The first line of that riddle is certainly familiar to folklorists as the begin-
ning of the title of I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth by lona and
Peter Opie (1947). In their Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959),
the Opies recorded more than a dozen different rhymed riddles collected
from British children. Riddles in this group included the Sphinx's riddle to
Oedipus as told by a fifteen-year-old girl; "four riddles which were known
in Charles I's time; and four which, although apparently traditional, do not
seem to have been previously recorded, for they are not included in Archer
Taylor's comprehensive collection" (Opie and Opie 1959, 76).
The same power that poetry and song have always had in religious
ritual manifests itself in children's rhymes and songs that are a part of their
superstitions or folk beliefs. Small children who want to play outside dur-
ing inclement weather know enough to chant
Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day,
Little wants to play.
When it is not raining, the children walking along the sidewalk know that
stepping on a crack can "break your mother's back. " And there are many,
many jump-rope rhymes that, besides setting the pace for the game, are also
ways of divining the future. There are jump-rope divinations to reveal the
name of a girl's boyfriend or future mate, the number of rooms in the house
the girl will live in when she is grown and married, the number of children
she will have, and much more.
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? ? COLLECTORS AND CRITICS
The initial or seminal studies of children's folklore recognized or assumed
that rhymes are a part of games, celebrations, superstitions, and the like.
W. W. Newell's Games and Songs of American Children (1883), Lady Alice
Gomme's Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1894-98),
and Norman Douglas's London Street Games (1916) all contain rhymes-
although rhymes are mentioned in none of the titles and only Newell's title
mentions songs. Of that era, Henry Bolton's Counting-Out Rhymes of Chil-
dren (1888) is one of the few that addresses itself directly to rhyme, even
though the rhymes are, in essence, rhymes that have to do with games.
More recent collections-with or without any accompanying criti-
cism-have followed this lead. Popular and well-known collections of
children's folklore such as lona and Peter Opie's I Saw Esau: Traditional
Rhymes of Youth (1947) and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(1959), Sandra McCosh's Children's Humour (1976), Mary and Herbert
Knapp's One Potato, Two Potato (1976), Turner's Cinderella Dressed in
Yella (1969), lona and Peter Opie's The Singing Game (1985), and Amanda
Dargan and Steven Zeitlin's City Play (1990) have tended to present rhymes
as a part of or related to some other subgenre of children's folklore, espe-
cially games, and have commented on the rhymes themselves, as rhymes, in
only very limited ways. Turner, for example, suggests that rhymes associ-
ated with games tend to live longer than rhymes of amusement because
"game-rhymes are required to regulate the games themselves, while amuse-
ment-rhymes are able to respond quickly to cultural changes and the events
of the day-and are at least in part required to do so" (Turner et al. 1978,
162). And the articles of children's rhymes and songs that have appeared in
various journals have, by and large, followed suit.
We know, however, that the spoken syllables "na-na-na-na-na" mean
very little to a child; whereas, those same syllables, chanted or sung with
the proper inflections, have the power to enrage that same child. More com-
plex versions of the same taunt, such as "Johnny kissed a girl" or "Johnny
is a fairy" seem easier to account for. The name-calling or action-attribu-
tion could certainly annoy or anger "Johnny," but that does not account for
the ability of the nonsense syllables to do the same thing. It is too easy to
say that the hearer imagines the unarticulated words; there must be some-
thing in the intonation, the rhythm, the actual notes themselves, that con-
tributes to this effect.
A few critics have tried to assess the rhymes as rhymes, and these crit-
ics have, at the very least, come up with some interesting findings. In an
afterword to A Rocket in My Pocket, Carl Withers suggests that the rhymes
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? ? are important precisely because they are rhymes: "Through the ancient de-
vice of rhyme, and the still more ancient ones of furious alliteration and asso-
nance, they have found a way to comment incisively, and often in a very up-
to-date fashion, upon the world of adults and upon other children" (Withers
1948, 204). Dorothy Howard, the very next year, commented on the "pro-
gressive intricacy of the rhythm patterns" of ball-bouncing rhymes collected
from chronologically sequential age groups (Howard 1949, 166).
And in 1966,
in an article in American Anthropologist, Robbins Burling compared nursery
rhymes in English, Chinese, and Bengkulu in some detail and found them all
to have a four-line, four-beats-per-line structure. Burling suggests that more
in the way of comparative metrical analysis needs to be done before the uni-
versality of this pattern can be ascertained, but he does speculate about what
such a universality might imply. "If these patterns prove to be universal, I can
see no explanation except that of our common humanity. We may simply be
the kind of animal that is predestined not only to speak, but also, on certain
occasions, to force language into a recurrent pattern of beats and lines"
(Burling 1966, 1435). Burling wonders if this translinguistic patterning might
also be true, at least in part, of "sophisticated verse. " More recently, efforts
like Howard Gardner's articles, especially "Metaphors and Modalities: How
Children Project Polar Adjectives onto Diverse Domains" and "Style and Sen-
sitivity in Children," and Peter Jusczyk's doctoral dissertation, "Rhymes and
Reasons: The Child's Appreciation of Aspects of Poetic Form," have dealt
specifically with the poetic devices children use and appreciate, devices whose
technical functions children will not be able to understand until much later
in their lives. In American Children's Folklore (1988), Simon Bronner treats
songs and rhymes in their own chapters and discusses the social and cultural
functions of the various subgenres, especially gross rhymes and song parodies,
arguing that children's folklore adapts to changing times and comments on
them (page 27).
RHYMES AND SONGS: A FUNCTIONAL BREAKDOWN
The definitive work on the nature of rhyme and the manner in which
children's traditional rhymed and metered materials achieve their effects has
yet to be written. Until it is, perhaps the closest we, as critics, can come to
an understanding of how poems and songs work is to observe their effects
on the people who use them. In other words, what we can do is look at the
ways in which poems and songs function as children's folklore.
As I have already mentioned, many rhymes and songs have been col-
lected as parts of children's games where they function as legislation. That
is, many of the rhymes and songs found in games are there as the legislative
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? ? structure; rhymes and songs are used to set up the game and get it under
way, to provide the rules for the game as it proceeds, and in some cases, to
determine the winner of the game when it is concluding. Before many games
can get started, it is often necessary to decide who will start the action-
who will be the first jump-rope jumper and who will be the twirlers, who
will be the first "it" for hide-and-go-seek or tag, or who will make the first
move. Often this is determined through a counting-out rhyme. A counting-
out rhyme is necessary in this situation because the first person to be "it" is
doing so freely and not as a penalty for having been caught or having his or
her hiding place spotted. The counting-out rhyme provides an impartial way
of selecting the first "it. " And some critics have suggested that the count-
ing-out rhyme dates back to much more serious and ancient sacrificial situ-
ations in which the person chosen was a literal sacrifice in a religious ritual.
In any case, the children accept the results of the counting-out rhyme as
impartial and impersonal so that there is no suggestion that the first "it" is
of any less stature than the other people in the game.
As the game gets started, a chant may be employed to state some
of the rules. When the "it" person for hide-and-go-seek finishes counting,
he may add, still in the chanting rhythm of the count, "Anybody around
my goal is it! " This means that no one can stand right beside the spot
where the counter is standing and tag the goal just as the counter finishes.
Should the counter forget to add that qualification, however, that rule does
not apply.
Any game may contain everything from the occasional rule-making
rhyme to a rhyme or song that continues as long as the game is played.
Within chasing and hiding games, one can occasionally hear rhymes like
"One, two, three/Get off my father's apple tree" (Knapp and Knapp 1976,
29). This two-line rhyme is designed to get a "base-hugger" to leave the
safety he is sticking too close to. If the "it" in hide-and-go-seek stays around
the goal too long, he is likely to hear the chant, "Goal sticker, goal sticker/
is a goal sticker. " These rhymes and chants, however, appear only
sporadically in chasing and hiding games; in games of jumping rope, rhymes
and songs often last for the duration of the game. It must be noted that these
rhymes and songs may have only one or two verses and then a long enu-
meration that continues until the jumper misses and is, temporarily anyway,
out. Rhymes like
Cinderella, dressed in yella
Went downtown to buy some mustard.
On her way her girdle busted,
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? ? How may people were disgusted?
1, 2, 3, 4,. . . (Turner et al. 1978, 14)
could, conceivably, go on forever, counting off the number of times the per-
son jumping makes it successfully over the rope. In fact, the twirlers usu-
ally increase the speed as the game goes on so that the jumper will eventu-
ally miss. There are, of course, other rhymes that have a specific duration,
and the jumper is required to stop when the rhyme is over and exchange
places with one of the twirlers or one of the waiting bystanders/observers.
In addition to jump rope there are other games that have rhymes or
songs that structure them and also continue for the duration of the game. Many
clapping and ball-bouncing games use rhymes or songs, and the familiar songs,
"London Bridge" and "Ring Around the Rosie," last all through the games
they structure. Most of these children's games do not have over-all winners
or losers. They generally conclude when most of the participants feel like stop-
ping rather than at some predetermined point in the game. External factors
such as darkness, homework, supper, and bedtime are much more likely to
conclude a game than the crowning of an absolute winner. In the case of a
game like jump rope, however, the number of jumps totaled up in the chant
might suggest that one jumper is better than the others.
A second category of children's rhymes and songs, and one which is
very close to the first category, contains rhymes and songs used for power.
Certainly teasing rhymes like "na-na-na-na-na" give the user some power
over the one at whom the rhyme is directed, and in its more complex ver-
sions, like "Nanny, Nanny, boo-boo/Stick your head in doo-doo," its power
to make the victim angry is impressive. As children get older, they acquire a
number of rhymes which give them the power to physically abuse another
child. To be caught in one of these situations, the victim must have never
heard the rhyme before, and so these tricks are often played on newcomers.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
Went down to the river to swim;
Adam and Eve got drowned.
Who was left?
When the victim answers this question-as he or she must, or lose consid-
erable face in the group-the person who said the rhyme can then pinch
away. Only a slightly more subtle rhyme instructs the victim to "Look up,
look down/ Look at my thumb/ Gee, you're dumb. " This rhyme, all by it-
self, is not a rhyme of physical abuse, but a later variation of it says
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? ? This is my finger,
This is my thumb,
This is my hand,
And here it comes.
As the last line is recited, the reciter steps closer and slaps the victim on the
cheek. Other tricks play on the word "duck," so that the victim thinks the
word refers to a bird while the trickster interprets it as an instruction; when
the victim does not duck, he or she is slapped by an immediately apologetic
trickster who says, "But I told you to duck. "
The fascinating aspect of these rhymes of physical abuse is that sel-
dom is a fight started. The victim realizes that he or she has been tricked.
The victim also realizes that there is a whole crowd watching the trick and
waiting for a reaction. The only thing the victim can do at the moment is
take it like a "good sport. " He or she may plot revenge and get back at the
tormentor with a similar trick at a later date, but the victim is more likely
to use the trick that was played on him or her to trick someone else. The
victim thus becomes an insider looking for a new outsider to prey upon.
There are various other rhymes used by one child to establish his su-
periority over another. Among young children, tricking someone into look-
ing at or for something that is not there is followed by this rhyme:
Made you look,
You dirty crook;
You stole your mother's
Pocketbook.
In general, victims seem much more willing participants in their own down-
fall when they are made to say a line or response that will eventually reflect
badly on them. At the end of one such series, the victim-after saying, "I
am a gold key," "I am a silver key," and "I am a brass key"-must then
announce, "I am a "monk key" (that is, a monkey). Once again, the victim
must accept the humiliation and wait to play the trick on someone else.
A third category of rhymes and songs suggests quite strongly that
children develop a sense of what is or is not acceptable at an early age, and
when they see another child acting in an unacceptable way, they often have
a rhyme or song of judgment for the occasion. One group of judgmental
rhymes is directed at children who are incorrectly dressed. Should someone
not have assembled his or her clothing carefully, he or she might hear
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? ? I see London,
I see France,
I see 's
Underpants.
Exposed underwear and open zippers seem to be primary targets for this
rhyme and others like it, but the clothing standards that such rhymes rein-
force are adult standards. The child who uses this rhyme is aware of "proper
dress" and is passing judgment or trying to correct the child who is unaware
of the standards or who has slipped.
There are other ways a child can violate the group's standards, and
there are rhymes for such occasions. A child who has been discovered to be
a liar is quite likely to hear "Liar, Liar/Pants on fire/Hanging from the tele-
phone wire. " The liar has violated the group's trust, and the insulting rhyme
is a judgment on the liar's actions. Other children whose actions set them
apart from the group-notably tattletales, crybabies, and teachers' pets-
will also have insulting rhymes directed at them. The child soon learns not
to act this way if he or she wants to remain a member in good standing.
Children with noticeable differences have always been singled out by
the group. In the past, children with glasses or braces were persons of ridi-
cule to their peers; that, however, seems to have changed, and braces are even
becoming a status symbol in certain parts of the country. Other obvious dif-
ferences, especially the physical ones, still attract attention. Adults who were
overweight children may never forget
Fatty, fatty, two by four,
Couldn't get through the bathroom door,
So he did it on the floor.
"Skinny" children, at the opposite end of the size spectrum, get similar treat-
ment, as do redheads and children who are especially funny/ugly.
This quickness to recognize differences makes children particularly
susceptible to racial and ethnic prejudice. To be sure, they are quick to pick
up and promulgate views that their parents have (so that there are staunch
eight-year-old Democrats and Republicans), but their recognition of physi-
cal and behavioral differences, already noted, suggests that the rhymes and
songs about blacks, Jews, and Asians that the Knapps collected for One Po-
tato, Two Potato (1976, 190-203) function only partly as racial material.
Some of the impetus for the transmission of these materials must come from
the group's sense of itself as a group, a sense that is certainly developed, in
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? ? part, by recognizing others that are not a part of the group-and racial dif-
ferences are easy to recognize. This does not make these rhymes of preju-
dice any more acceptable, but it does enable us to understand a bit more
clearly why children are so quick to use them. 4
The fourth category, which may well be the largest and which also
crosses into other categories from time to time, consists of rhymes and songs
that contain wit and humor. A great deal of material in this category is de-
rived, ultimately, from the adult world. Children seem to have little respect
for even the most traditional nursery rhymes, the most serious television
commercials, or the most sacred songs. Parodies of "Mary Had A Little
Lamb," as well as parodies of other nursery rhymes abound. Television com-
mercials extolling the effectiveness or the quality of some new or well-known
product become rhymes or jingles disparaging the product. In the 1950s, the
Pepsi-Cola slogan, "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot," became
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot,
Smells like vinegar, tastes like snot;
Pour it in the kitchen sink,
Five minutes later, it begins to stink.
And more recently, commentaries concerning the use of Comet cleanser have
been collected.
Comet, it makes your mouth turn green;
Comet, it tastes like kerosene;
Comet, it makes you vomit;
So get Comet and vomit today.
Not only do children seem quite willing to parody television commercials,
but they also seem quite willing, unlike most adults, to make jokes about
"snot" and "vomit. "
Songs, too, are readily parodied by children and the children do not
seem to be at all upset that songs adults consider important-whether secular
political songs or sacred church music-are being violated. And so, "The
Star-Spangled Banner" becomes
Oh, say can you see,
Any bedbugs on me?
If you can, take a few,
'Cause I got them from you.
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? ? And there are similar parodies of "America," "Yankee Doodle," and
"America the Beautiful. " Church music is certainly not immune from parody.
Generations of school children have sung variations of a parody of "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic" through which they get some psychological
revenge on the educational system by describing "The Burning of the School"
and enthusiastically singing one variation or another of the chorus:
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
I bopped her on the bean
With a rotten tangerine,
And her teeth went marching on.
Similar parodies exist of "We Three Kings," "Jesus Loves Me," "Hark! The
Herald Angels Sing," and many more. In the same vein, there are parodies,
in the appropriate rhyme and meter, of various prayers, from "Grace" be-
fore meals to "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. " The children's answer to the
old cliche "Is nothing sacred? " would seem to be a resounding "No! "
Another large segment of humorous rhyme and song is also derived,
albeit indirectly, from the adult world. Children begin to learn quite early
that there are "unacceptable" or "dirty" words in the English language,
words that they should be especially careful not to say in the presence of
adults. That, of course, makes those words all that much more delicious to
say-if only within the peer group. In One Potato, Two Potato, the Knapps
place these rhymes and songs in a larger category that they call "shockers"
(Knapp and Knapp 1976, 179-89). And it is a shock to many adults to dis-
cover that children know and joke about body parts, bodily functions, sexual
differences, and sexual activities. Art Linkletter may not have realized it, but
kids will also say the grossest things. "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy
Gopher Guts," a song that usually ends with the line "And me without a
spoon," is not a song that most adults would enjoy; children-especially boys
(but that may be role-playing)-love it. And there are any number of rhymes,
some of them parodies of nursery rhymes, that focus on bodily functions or
the products thereof:
In 1944,
The Monkey climbed the door;
The door split,
And the Monkey shit,
In 1944.
I57
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? ? And what Jack burned when he missed his jump over the candlestick is al-
most too painful to think about. Adults seem to have conveniently forgot-
ten that they ever knew and passed on such materials, and when it comes
to the rhymes and songs about sexual matters, they "can't imagine" how
the children know such things. The Knapps collected the following parody/
shocker from a ten-year-old: "Now I lay her on the bed/I pray to God I'll
use my head. " And the following song parody, also collected by the Knapps,
exhibits a somewhat more sophisticated knowledge:
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
My Bonnie lies over the sea,
My daddy lies over my mommy,
And that's how they got little me.
(Knapp and Knapp 1976, 172, 185)
The children, for their part, are more perceptive than the adults concerning
this humor; the children are aware of how the adults would react and, there-
fore, keep these materials generally among themselves.
There are a great many reasons why children find humor in these
materials, and defiance of adult prohibitions is probably the least important
reason of all. Certainly one of the reasons children use these words (and a
reason they will later be eager to try cigarettes, alcohol, and sex) is to feel
like adults. By using these materials, the children are like the adults whom
they have very likely heard saying the same words or talking about the same
topics. In addition, sexual humor-whether a parody or a song or rhyme in
its own right-is a way of dealing with a topic of considerable anxiety in
such a way that the anxiety is largely removed. Laughter, after all, is a way
of dealing with fear and nervousness as well as a way of expressing delight.
There is, in fact, a considerable amount of work to be done in mapping the
development of children's sexual humor, work that should show that the
humor changes-in topic as well as understanding-as the child grows older
and more aware of first his or her own sexuality and then sexuality in rela-
tion to the sexuality of other people.
The last category is, of course, miscellaneous, and in it are lumped
rhymes and songs that might be considered in one or more of the other cat-
egories but do deserve some mention on their own. Certainly there are hu-
morous parodies and rhymes of judgment among autograph rhymes, but the
occurrence of the specific item, the autograph rhyme, is the result of an
autographing situation rather than a joke-telling session. And many of the
rhymes, like the one that follows, could be nothing but autograph rhymes:
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