Warning: thread drift-at least sorta.

Ernest, your reference to "Mary Mac" may have been tongue in cheek", but I'm interested in the connection between the "Mary Mac marry me" song and the very widely known {among many African American adults and children anyway}children's rhyme {Miss} Mary Mack [also known as "Old Mary Mack", "Mary Mack" etc}.

The verses for this rhyme as I learned them in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1950s and as I hear them in Pittsburgh, PA in the 1980s to date, are [with the minor Pittsburgh changes in brackets]:

Miss Mary Mary Maack Mack Mack
all dressed in black black black
with silver buckels [buttons] buckels, buckles, buckels
all down her back back back

She asked her mother mother mother
for 15 [50] cents cents cents
to see the elephant elephant elephant
jumpt the fence fence fence

He jumped so high high high
He touched the sky sky sky
and he never came back back back
till the 4th of July ly ly

-snip

I don't remember doing a handclap or any other movement to this "song" but I've seen it performed as a two partner, three person, and four person {to sets of partners alternating handclaps in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. One book I read "Negro Folk Songs-USA" by Courlander, though I muight be mistaken about the author-noted that Mary Mack was a children's line game.

There are other floating verses to this song, depending on what region one lives in. For instance, the July won't walk/July won't talkJuly won't eat with a knive and folk" and "she went upstairs to make her bed/bumped her head on a piece of corn bread" and the "went to the river but couldn't get across" series of rhymes...

I remember reading somewhere that Mary Mac[k] was an English {Bristish?} riddle for coffin. Has any one else heard this? Also, there is a "song" entitled "The Elephant" in Thomas W. Talley which starts with the rhyme about [the girl?] asking her mother for 15 cents to see the elephant jump the fence, and the elephant not coming back until July. However, that song does not include any reference to Mary Mack.

I'm curious how these two rhymes got so intrically linked together.