The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #18352   Message #2116737
Posted By: Azizi
01-Aug-07 - 03:23 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Playground songs
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Playground songs
Viracocha, I loved reading your examples! Thanks for sharing them.
As Mo mentioned in her post, when I was growing up {in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA{ the "Ballerina" example was done to the words "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear". Btw, in New Jersey {and in Pennsylvania where I live now} "skipping" rhymes are called "jump rope rhymes".

Viracocha, your "Helicopter, Helicopter" reminds me a little of the jump rope rhyme:
motor cycle, motor cycle
move so fast
motor cycle, motor cycle
put on the gas.

[at these words, the people turning the ropes would turn them even faster, and the jumper would have to keep up by jumping fast or she'd or {less often} he'd miss and a new jumper would jump in to take that jumper's place. I remember that sometimes the jumper would let other kids jump along with them. But if one person missed, all those jumping at that turn were out.

**

I don't remember reciting your "my boyfriend gave me an apple" rhyme. But the words to this rhyme live on in a lot of examples of {what is usually now a handclap rhyme} "Miss Susie Had A Steamboat". Here's the lines as they are usually given in those rhymes:

"My mother gave me a nickel/ My father gave me a dime/ My sister gave me her old boyfriend/ His name was Frankenstein/He made me do the dishes/He made me wash the floors/He made me clean his underwear/So I kicked him out the door/I kicked him over London/ I kicked him over France/I kicked him over Hawaii/where he learned the hula dance."

For examples of those rhymes, you can visit this page on my website:
Cocojams; Handclap and Jump Rope Rhymes

**

I don't remember reciting the "Apples, Crumble Apple Tart" one that you shared, though it sounds very much like some rhymes that begin with "Apples, Peaches, [and something else] that I have collected.
I also don't remember the " Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales" rhyme that you shared. Nor do I remember ever seeing it in print before. With regard to that rhyme, you wrote:

"Then there was French skipping (with a french-skipping-rope)

Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales (or England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales)
Inside Outside Donkies' TAILS!"

-snip-

My question is what is "French skipping"? Is it like what we called "Double Dutch" when two ropes are turned with each one simultaneously going the other direction and a jumper or jumper in the middle? Unfortunately, I never was able to jump Double Dutch jumping and I never was able to turn the ropes for Double Dutch either.

**

In my next post to this thread, I'll share an example of a movement rhyme that I collected that seems very much like your "Kings and Queens Arriving" rhyme.