Folklore: Tell tale tit..

Subject: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,lurcio
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 04:25 PM

...your tongue will split.

Any additions to this lovely piece of childrens verse on what will happen to those who tell teacher?

L.

Subject: ADD: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,Wyrd Sister
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 04:39 PM

"Tell Tale Tit
Your tongue shall be slit
And all the little dicky-birds will have a little bit"

Sheffield, 1950s

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 04:43 PM

"All the little puppy-dogs..." in London, 1930s.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 04:51 PM

Puppy dogs. Midlands 1960s.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 05:05 PM

Tell tale tit
Your mother cannot knit
Your father has to walk
With a walking stick

(SE Northumberland, 1960s)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Little Robyn
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 05:16 PM

In NZ in the 50s we had
"Tell Tale Tit
Your tongue will be split
And all the little puppy dogs will have a little bit"
Robyn

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,John MacKenzie
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 05:48 PM

Tell tale tit
Yer mammy cannae knit
Yer daddy cannae go tae bed
Wi'oot a dummy tit

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,blowz sans cookie
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 06:11 PM

Tell tale tit
Your mother can't knit
Your father has to walk
With a walking stick

Was our rhyme - Co Durham (east Durham coalfield villages) 1960s

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 04:03 AM

All the little birdies in Essex 1960s

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: banjoman
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 05:47 AM

Always knew the first line as

"Clat Tale Tit your tongue shall be split
And all the little birdies will have a little bit"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 09:51 AM

I seem to remember that at the school I went to on S Coast (Goring-on-Sea, near Worthing) in 1940, it was "all the dogs in our town" who would have a little bit,

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 06:49 PM

John Mackenzie's version above is how I remember it from 1950s/'60s Lanarkshire/Central Scotland.

The plain-spoken "dummy-tit" of Scotland seems to get Bowdlerized to anything but in England and elsewhere. "Teether", "soother" etc and various pet-names have taken its place. Shame.

Ross

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 07:14 PM

Putting my pedantic hat on (which I don't do very often but I know Ross is a stickler for accuracy in all things) I'd say Dummy is the standard word; or more often Dodo. I once cut the rubber teet off such a thing and submitted it to an exhibition of subversive art under the cunning title Dada Dodo - neet, eh? A teether is something very different (harder plastic ring for teething infant gumbs to chew on) and a soother can be both a teether and a dodo.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 07:20 PM

Not getting anywhere with a search for DODO (other than some mad looking extinct flightless bird). PACIFIER is common; SOOTHER likewise.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 07:29 PM

Lancashire (as was, now the Metropolitan Borough of somewhere-or-other) in thge late 50s:

Tell tale tit
Yer tongue shall be split
All the little dicky-birds shall have a little bit

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 07:30 PM

the

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 05:55 AM

Bradford, early 1960's it was sung/chanted possibly as a skipping rhyme or as a dip-dip-dip?

Tell tale tit.
Your mother can't knit.
Your father's in (the coal shed?)
Eating fish and chips.

As I reach the end line, my brain is trying to tell me it went on to a second verse, but I can't bring one to mind. I have a feeling that it went on to include other family members - brother, sister...
Maybe someone at school treated it like a sea shanty, with the person leading the rhyme adding to it on the fly?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 06:03 AM

This rhyme appears in a nursery-rhyme collection I have.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 08:01 AM

And what are the lines as written in the nursery rhyme collection?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 08:05 AM

I believe they are: Tell tale tit
Your tongue shall be split
And all the dogs in our town
Shall have a little bit

There were also songs- songs! in that book, so not strictly a rhyme collection, more like a rhymes and songs collection.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Tig
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 06:52 PM

I know it with Puppy Dogs

My Gran taught me it in Yorkshire in the 50's.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 04:42 AM

So far, if I have it right, apart from such variables as "Your mother is... &c", the candidates for a little bit of the slit [or split] tongue are: little puppy dogs, little {dicky-}birds, dogs in our town ~~~

Have I forgotten any? Any others? Anybody be bothered to count how many of each adduced so far?

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 10:04 AM

It has been going through my head and what comes out the other end are things on the lines of...

Tell tale tit.
Your mother can't knit.
Brother's got an Ice Cream
Want to have a bit.

Tell tale tit.
Your mother can't knit.
Sister's got a lolly
want to have a lick.

Definitely in format for skipping or throwing a ball against a wall.

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 10:07 AM

I had it nearly the same as John MacKenzie:

Tell tale tit
Yer granny cannae knit
Yer daddy cannae gae tae work
Wi'oot a dummy tit

Embro, the 1950s.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 10:14 AM

I can see why it used as a skipping or ball-bouncing game: but such usage takes much of the point out of it. There are plenty of those: but in my day, TTT was a genuine, menacing cry of contempt aimed at a tell-tale, and declaimed with true hostility and venom.

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 10:34 AM

That, and chanting 'Klypie, klypie!'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 10:40 AM

The Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, 1875, gives Blobtit and Blobtongue as names for a tell-tale, but doesn't quote them in a rhyme.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST,Michael Shaw
Date: 06 May 11 - 05:52 PM

my Dad grew up in Lnncashire in the 20s and 30s, and "dickie birds" was the version he taught me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: gnomad
Date: 06 May 11 - 06:55 PM

Tell tale tit, yer tongue will split,
All the little doggies will have a little bit.

Not sure which of two areas, either Nottingham late '50s, or Hull '60 onwards, I think more likely the latter.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Judy Dyble
Date: 07 May 11 - 02:43 AM

'puppy dogs' in North London, when I was little (50's)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: ScottishVoice
Date: 07 May 11 - 04:46 PM

Tell Tale Tit
Yer tongue'll be slit
An' a' the cats an' a' the dogs'll
hae a little bit.

Used to chant this (not at anyone) in the playground in the 1990's in Aberdeenshire. Think we may have skipped to it but not 100% sure.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 07 May 11 - 05:28 PM

So there are different things done with this rhyme, but mostly it tends to be a children's referring to to telling on other kids.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Dec 12 - 12:24 PM

Tell tale tit
your mother cant knit
the boys and girls out side are helping you out
tell tale tit
you daddy has to work with a dummy tit

so move yourself tell tale tit and go to sleep and never come back again

or my teacher said tell tale tit your mummy cant knit you daddy cant even get a football kit

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Apr 14 - 02:14 AM

Tell tale tit
Yer mammy cannae Knit
Yer fathers in the dust bin
Eatin' fish and chips.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Apr 14 - 02:41 AM

Doea it go back to folklore stories of talking birds?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Apr 14 - 03:00 AM

One of the more barbaric practices of bird-catchers in the olden times was to split the tongue of songbirds to make them better singers.
Not sure of the details of this, but apparently some birds' tongues are inflexible and the process of splitting them loosens them up and makes the song more fluid.
We were told this by members of a family of English bird-catchers known as the 'Gilly-Gooley" Smiths, who specialised in catching songbirds and selling them; 'tongue-splitting' was still practiced by them up to the middle of the 20th century.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jun 17 - 05:52 PM

I remember my grandmother saying..
Tell tale tit your tongue shall be split, and every birdie in the world shall have a little bit...
She was born in Queensbury England in 1914.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Oct 21 - 05:33 AM

I remember the first two lines, but also the last line, 'and you shall never have a daughter.' Or is that from a different rhyme?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Oct 21 - 02:53 PM

On close pages of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook Vol 2, 1744 are the following:

p35
Lyer Lyer Lickspit
Turn about the candlestick
Whats good for Lyars
Brimstone and Fire.

p37
Spit cat, spit
Your tongue shall be split
And all the dogs in our town
Shall have a Bit.

Unfortunately p36 has been removed from the BL online images as being too offensive, possibly racist.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tell tale tit..
From: rich-joy
Date: 16 Oct 21 - 08:08 PM

In Perth, Western Australia (a most remote part of the far-flung Empire!), I recall in the 1950s it being :

"Tell-Tale Tit
Your tongue will split
& all the little dickie birds
will have a little bit"

As MGM Lion remarked above, this was not used as a skipping or ball bouncing rhyme, but reserved as a venomous public scolding of a "Dobber".
Until these Covid and Social Media riddled days, where the Community is actively encouraged "to dob" - or tell - on one another, being a Dobber was one of the worst crimes an Aussie (kid or adult) could commit!!!!

Cheers,
R-J