In Philadelphia, at least up into the 50s, you used to hear children (especially girl children) singing songs while they played. The same ones were used generation after generation. It might have gone on after that, but I began to live in neighborhood where there were not many kids.

Since I have lived in Sydney, I haven't heard this. I moved there in '75. So there is a gap in my Philadelphia experience from, say '57 to '75. Can anyone tell me if the custom died out there during that interval. I assume it was a big city pehnomenon, rather than just a Philly one.

I was reminded of this listening to a Smithsonian Leadbelly CD. He does a children's song called Little Sally Walker which he says comes from where he comes from. It goes something like:

Little Sally Walker
sitting in a saucer
turn to the east, turn to the west
turn to the one that you love best

The one I remember goes something like

Little Sally Anne
Sitting in the sand
turn to the...
(The rest is the same.)

If Leadbelly remembers it from his childhood, it has managed travel through a lot of time and space.

Another one was a rope-skipping song starting with

One, two, three, O'Leary

Murray