Lighter, thanks for posting that information about "Wire, brier, limber, lock". I had no knowledge of that line until reading your post and then reading other examples online. I think that line may not have survived in contemporary African American children's playground rhymes because the words "brier" and "limber" aren't familiar to most AA children (or American children of other races/ethnicities, for that matter).

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John Minear, thanks for your great work on the song "Limber Jim". I just read that interesting & informative thread.

For what it's worth, I quoted several definitions of "limber" in this Mudcat thread thread.cfm?threadid=82051#1853483 "Dance To The Music" and related those definitions to the Afro-Caribbean dance the "Limbo". Here is one of those definitions:

limber:

Verb
S: (v) limber, limber up (attach the limber) "limber a cannon"
S: (v) limber (cause to become limber) "The violist limbered her wrists before the concert"

Adjective
S: (adj) limber, supple ((used of e.g. personality traits) readily adaptable) "a supple mind"; "a limber imagination"
S: (adj) limber ((used of artifacts) easily bent)
S: (adj) limber, supple ((used of persons' bodies) capable of moving or bending freely)

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=limber

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In that "Dance To The Music" thread I shared my view that the Limbo dance was more than just a test of how agile (limbo) a person was. In addition to that, I think the movement of that dance originally was meant to symbolize moving from one state of being (existence) to another. One clue regarding this is that the Limbo was traditionally performed during the Caribbean day funeral wakes called "Dinkies".


I'm not suggesting that the word "limber" as used in that old (I believe British origin) line "wire, brier, limber lock" has anything to do with the Limbo dance.

However, maybe that line means that people should strive to be in good physical condition. They should not only be alert not to get into any wire (something that ties them up) or brier {a tangled mass of prickly plants), but if they get so entangled, they should be agile (limber) enough to get out of (escape from) whatever is locking them up or impeding their freedom of movement.

I'm not implying that this "wire, brier, limber lock" line was ever used by enslaved African Americans as a coded signal that a person or several people were planning to escape from slavery. However, I suppose such a use was possible-sometimes. I just doubt that that was that line's meaning all of the time (the same way that I doubt that the African American spiritual "Steal Away" was always used as a coded song).

But that's moving to a whole nuther subject so I'll end my post before I get carried away.