The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #47148   Message #1991290
Posted By: Azizi
09-Mar-07 - 07:29 AM
Thread Name: eena meena mackeracka (children's rhymes)
Subject: RE: eena meena mackeracka (children's rhymes)
Hopefully senewb will respond to your post greg. However, if you're talking about the second version of that rhyme that senewb shared, in my informal but relatively constant collection of rhymes over the Internet {from 2000 to date}m I've found a number of versions of those lines. Here's an example from http://blog.oftheoctopuses.com/000518.php

candy apple on a stick
makes my heart go 3,4 to 6
not because your dirrty
not because your clean just because
you kissed a boy behind
the magazine
hey girls wanna have some fun
here come(_name_) with his pants undone
he can wobble he can do the twist
but most of all he can kiss kiss kiss
now close your eyes and count to ten if you miss u mary him!
-posted by Lil gUm cHeweR at April 28, 2004

-snip-


Since the mid 1980s, I've been alert to children's rhymes performed by children {mostly Black children} in the Pittsburgh area.
I've heard "eenie meenie" [with the "catch a tiger by the toe" and the "ensty minsty miney mo" ending] used as a counting out rhyme. But I haven't [yet] heard that candy apple on a stick rhyme. However, it may indeed be recited here.

I've collected that 'apple on a stick' and 'kiss a boy behind a magazine' verse from two Pittsburgh adults who grew up in other US cities. And I found this version of all three of those rhymes in a book on Black American children's rhymes from Houston, Texas
Barbara Michels & Bettye White, "Apples On A Stick"
(Coward-McCann, New York, 1983, p. 17)


Shake, shake, shake
Eeny meany
That's a queeny
Ooh ba Thumblina
Ah cha ca che Liberace
Oh baby I love you
Yes I do
Take a peach
Take a plum
Take a piece of bubble gum
No peach
No plum
Just a piece of bubble gum
Ooshe ahshe
Ooshe ahshe
I want a piece of pie
The pie too sweet
I want a piece of meat
The meat too tough
I want to ride the bus
The bus too full
I want to ride the bull
The bull's too black
I want my money back
The money's too green
I want a diamond ring.

-snip-

Btw, the authors didn't note which category of rhyme this is.
I think it's either handclap rhyme or a jump rope rhyme.

Fwiw, it appears that a number of jumprope rhymes have become handclap rhymes and not vice versa. There's various reasons why jumping rope appears to be done less often. Imo, one key reason is that school teachers and other staff no longer provide jumpropes for girls to play with during school recess. Another key reason is that the clothes dryer has made obsolete the practice of hanging clothes outside on lines to dry. This removed children's access to those 'clothes lines' which were a 'free' source of jump ropes.

My opinion on those fake jump ropes they sell at stores nowadays-
"Bah Humbug!"