I happened upon this thread last night. After reading some of the old American variants of "Ring Around The Rosie", I got to thinking about the possible connection between these rhymes and the version of "Green Sally Up" that is found on Disc 4 of Alan Lomax's Sounds of the South, A Musical Journey from the Georgia Sea Isles to the Mississippi Delta {Atlantic 787496-2; 1993}.

There's another version of "Green Sally Up" that is included in the book but not the record of African American Georgia Sea Isles children's game songs, Step It Down by Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes. The "Step It Down" version of "Green Sally Up" is composed by combining floating lines and verses from "Miss Mary Mack", "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and other African American children's rhymes. As such, besides their first lines, the "Step It Down" version has very little in common with the "Sounds Of The South" version of "Green Sally Up". For that reason I think that the "Sounds Of The South" version of "Green Sally Up" is older than the "Step It Down" version.

Here are the two versions of these rhymes that I've mentioned:

Version #1- [from "Sounds Of The South" CD]
Green Sally up. Green Sally down.
last one squat got to tear the ground.

Ole {Oh?} Miss Lucy dead and gone.
Left me here to weep and moan.
If you hate it fold your arms.
If you love it clap your hands.

-snip-

Version #2- [from "Step It Down"]
Green Sally up, Green Sally down
Green Sally bake her possum brown.

Asked my mama for fifteen cents
to see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high, he touched the sky
He never got back till the fourth of July.

You see that house upon that hill,
That's where me and my baby live.

Oh the rabbit in the hash come a-stepping in the dash,
With his long-tailed coat and his beaver on.

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Btw, the song "Flowers" by the pop singer Moby uses the repeated clip of the Sounds of The South recording of "Green Sally Up". Could it be that Moby named his song "Flowers" because he thinks there's a connection between "Green Sally Up" and "Ring Around The Rosie" [particularly those versions of that game song found in Newell's book and posted in Q's 30 Oct 04 - 11:21 PM comment on this thread]?

Maybe...

**

I'll share some additional thoughts about the possible connections between some "Ring Around The Rosie" rhymes and the "Sounds of South" version of "Green Sally Up" in my next post to this thread.