Today’s Poetry Friday is an oldie-but-goodie I posted ages ago. It’s one of my favorite types of poetry, the spontaneous playground sort.
Traditional Children’s “Counting Out” rhymes.
Inter mitzy titzy tool
ira dira dominu
oker poker dominoker
out goes you
Intery mintery cutery corn
apple seed and briar thorn
wire briar limber lock
five geese in a flock
sit and sing by a spring
O U T and in again
When I went up the apple tree,
All the apples fell on me,
Bake a pudding, bake a pie,
Did you ever tell a lie?
Yes, you did,
You know you did,
You broke your mother’s teapot lid,
L-I-D spells “lid”
And out goes you!
Monkey, Monkey, bottle of beer,
How many monkeys are there here?
One is far, one is near,
And you are the one
Who is out, my dear.
Wire, briar, limberlock,
Three geese in a flock,
One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
The clock fell down,
The mouse ran around,
Scared all the people in the town—
And out goes she
With a dirty dishrag
On her knee!
– Author unknown
I ran across these and loved them, though I must say I don’t know to whose tradition they belong. I keep an ear out for counting rhymes because they always carry some sort of regional flavor that belongs uniquely to that neighborhood, that school district or that time. ‘Ol’ Mary Mac, all dressed in black, with silver buttons all down her back,’ asks her mother in one song for fifteen cents to “see the elephants jump the fence.” Elsewhere she wants to see “the presidents.” (Fence-jumping elephants, however, infinitely more exciting back in the day. From the number of people crowding the Capitol Mall last month, I’d say presidents are on the upswing again.)
One of my favorite from older years — is the chemistry rhyme, definitely started in a school somewhere:
Johnny had a little drink
But Johnny drinks no more
Because what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4.
You will now never forget the formula for sulfuric acid, will you?
Childhood. Strange days of spontaneous, playground poetry.
I remember my sisters and I weeping with laughter over my father’s childhood hide-and-seek counting chant, “Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco by the streetcar line…” and then hearing the words in a reggae song years later (not, sadly, followed by the shout, “Are ya’ll hid?”). We were sure he’d made that up, but apparently a Pensacola childhood is… like a reggae song? Who knows. Who knows…
There are more piquant and unexpected pleasures at Poetry Friday, hosted for the very first time at Elaine at Wild Rose Reader. Happy weekend to you, may you, in some way, rediscover a portion of childhood…
I Know the one about Johnny drinking! How about these:
Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish the heck he’s go away
I eat my peas with honey
I’ve done it all my life
They do taste kind of funny
but it keeps them on the knife
Wow, what you remember from childhood!
Claudia, who has managed to forget her Google password. Sigh.
Wow, thanks for visiting, guys!
This is, in fact, my new blogging home — reviews will still be on Finding Wonderland. Welcome, JoNelle!
Julie, I’m still — STILL! — trying to pronounce the Spanish counting game — and translate it all. That one’s fun!
Hello Tanita,
Love the cadence and the rhythms.These things just grow and grow!
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I second Jules’s recommendation of the Opies’ book, which is titled CHILDREN’S GAMES IN STREET AND PLAYGROUND. They also wrote a brilliant book called THE LORE AND LANGUAGE OF SCHOOLCHILDREN. A playground is the best place ever to sit and realize how much kids really do love poetry, though they sometimes don’t think of it as poetry.
Here’s a quick counting rhyme from Mexico –
De tin marin, dedo pingue,
cucara, macara, titere fue.
Yo no fui, fue te te –
Pegale, pegale, que ese fue.
It’s all nonsense and wordplay (in fact, it’s hard to type out – because the choices are varied of how you hear it) mixed up with a few recognizable phrases. Fun! Great post – I loved your choices, Tanita.
The Opies (Peter and Iona — did I get his name right?) have a great book on play-yard rhymes.
I didn’t know about this blog ’til Jama Rattigan just sent me here. Will it be the same content as FW? Very nice!
Jules
MUCH more fun than the solitary “Eenie, meanie, miney, moe…” of my childhood. We were not so rich in rhymes where I grew up, I guess!
I can almost feel my palms smarting from whacking them against my friends as we chanted Ms. Mary Mack. What were there, like a thousand verses??
Is this your new home?
Fun. I have never heard any of these.
Yay – these were so much fun! Thank you 🙂
How fun! The only one I remember singing is Miss Mary Mack. This was a great idea for a post!
I absolutely LURV these! It’s like the essence of childhood in a bottle.
Plus, I adore your new website!
It’s amazing how these rhymes from childhood hit you in a deep place. Even the “bad” ones (my 32 year old brother still knows every version ‘Diarrhea’).
You can almost hear the skipping rope on the sidewalk as you read. Thanks for sharing a little piece of childhood.
These are great fun. I can hear the happy voices chanting away. Kids and poetry – who can stop them?
These are so much fun! None of them rings a bell for me except for the “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” line, obviously. There are two “it” rhymes I remember being popular at my elementary school: “Skunk in the barnyard — P.U. Who did it come from? From you!” and “Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish. How many pieces do you wish?” which after you counted went into this long bit about kissing boys behind magazines — boys who then wibbled and wobbled and did the splits.