It also occurs to me that the "Brick wall" part of that rhyme could have originated in The Commodores' 1977 R&B hit "Brick House". This song praised a stacked [well built] woman with these words:
Artist: The Commodores Lyrics Song: Brick House Lyrics
Chorus: She's a brick----house Mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out She's a brick----house The lady's stacked and that's a fact, ain't holding nothing back.
She's a brick----house She's the one, the only one, who's built like a amazon We're together everybody knows, and here's how the story goes.
Verse: 1. She knows she got everything a woman needs to get a man, yeah. How can she use, the things she use 36-24-36, what a winning hand!
(Chorus)
Verse: 2. The clothes she wears, the sexy ways, make an old man wish for younger days She knows she's built and knows how to please Sure enough to knock a man to his knees
It may be that both these possibilities are valid [or neither one is valid]. I don't think children spend very much time [if they spend any time at all] trying to figure out the meaning of a rhyme. For instance, I think that children hear "Brick Wall/Water Fall" as words that make sense to them :o) and rhyme..The meaningfulness is important, but it's the sound of the rhyme that trumps everything else AND the fact that the rest of the rhyme fits into a familiar pattern of two sentence rhymes that children are familiar with.
I don't think that children say to themselves "When I say brick wall/water fall" I'm calling that girl [or guy] a wallflower.
In other words, I think adults speculate about these questions of source materials and meanings. Kids say & do rhymes as a means of self-entertainment without getting heavy duty about them.
Btw, Mo. Thanks for giving me [and others] the opportunity to think out loud about children's rhymes on this thread and other threads that you have recently started.