Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 15:04:13 EST
Reply-To: Elaine Brennan
Sender: "HUMANIST: Humanities Computing"
From: Elaine Brennan
Subject: 6.0503 E-Texts of Jump Rope Rhymes (1/62)
To: Stan Kulikowski II
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0503. Sunday, 14 Feb 1993.
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 16:24:50 CST
From: stan kulikowski ii
Subject: jump rope rhymes
an electric valentine to all the girls on internet...
,
... :``..':
: ````.' :''::' a couple weeks ago i put a comment
..:.. : .'' : on kidsnet@pittvms about wanting to
``. `: .' : see some jump rope rhymes online. and
: : : : someone replied that gopher fun&games
: : : : music lyrics could find about 6 or 7
: : : : of them. someone gave me reference
: : :..''''``::. to some hardcopy folklore literature.
: ...:..' .''
.' .' .::::' uncharacteristicly (for me) i did
:..'''``::::::: go to the library and the folklorists
' `:::: claimed over 600 jump rope rhymes
`::. preserved. this may seem like a lot
`:: to hardcopy scholars. since each rhyme
:::. is rarely 300 bytes long, this seemed
..:```.:'`. ::'`. a trivial amount of text to me. so i
..' `:.: :: started typing my own textbase to see.
.: .:``:::
.: ..'' ::: apparently, jump rope rhymes are a
: .'' :: recent vintage. the scholars agree
: :: that boys used to jump rope in 19th
: century, but they did not chant while
doing it. changes in female garments
permitted girls to start jump roping
around 1890. they brought with them clapping songs which adapted to the
rhythm established by the rope. in english-speaking cultures, the boys
stopped jump rope when the girls started. most of the text is from this
century and is a predominantly feminine heritage.
now, having gone through every jump rope source in UWF library, i have
233 of them online. this amounts to barely 70K of text. anyone who is
interested may download them from internet and do with them as you will.
i would like to add any new
or interesting variants if you :
will send them to me. surely : ftp UWF.cc.UWF.edu
with all the interest in rap : login: stananon
chants, the children must have : password: stananon
many newer ones to contribute. : set ftp to: binary
this text just cries out for : > get jumprope.zip
hypertextual organization. i :
would write one so kids could
access the rhymes they like, if there is interest from the networks for
this task. i still have some technical work to do to make this a
machine-readable corpus for scholars, but it would be nice to have it
available for children to use and contribute. it is their text afterall,
we adults are only secondary consumers.
stan
I am a little sailor girl
Dressed in yellow.
. This is the way stankuli@UWF.bitnet
=== I treat my fellow.
| | I kiss him and I hug him
--- And I kick him in the pants.
And that is the end
Of my romance.