I'm surprised by my own naivete:

The words I heard/learned for the "Pick a Bale" song when I was a child (off a taped-from-a-record borrowed-cassette) were

"Oh, Mandy, pick a bale of cotton, oh, Mandy, pick a bale a day..." No 'Lordy', which to us would have been an irreverence that would have drawn disapproval from my conservative fundamentalist parents.

And the high-energy, pulsingly rhythmic styling of the music reinforced my innocent conception of the words as a 'bragging song': "Me and my partner, we can pick a bale of cotton...me and my wife, we can pick a bale a day...Jump down! Spin around! Pick a bale a day!"

We had an enormous 'tuck garden' as we were growing up; all of us children used to have to take our turn at the hoeing, cultivating, weeding, harvesting, etc. that was associated with the expanse, and we would sing this, along with many folk work songs such as 'Sixteen Tons', 'Working on the Railroad', 'Halifax Line', 'Leave 'er Johnny', etc. I remember us singing the lines from Belafonte's 'Day-O' quite pointedly at my father when we thought we had been down there long enough: "Work all night till the morning come! Daylight come and I wanna go home...."

I hadn't thought about/ remembered the 'Pick a Bale of Cotton' song for many years until the recent post to the forum. An 'of course!' moment may not happen as frequently for me these days, but they do still occur.


And I was also shocked to discover that a counting rhyme I have used equally innocently for years with the words 'catch a tiger by the toe' apparently had a far different noun (and intent) in its original inception.

So - am I guilty of racism and reinforcing stereotypes? Or merely ignorance? Is 'ignorance of the law' - or in this case the background, history, and etymologies involved - no excuse? And should I find another counting-out rhyme when arbitrarily choosing children for the games I play daily with them?






[I'm sure Azizi (at the least) will answer (the last question at the least!) because I know she has a passion for children's rhymes :) ]