I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: Uly
Date: 30 Jan 10 - 11:37 AM

Well, it's not. Most of it, in fact, is a sample of what genuine children were saying 20, 30, or 40 years ago... not what they learned from grown-ups.

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,susan
Date: 19 Jul 10 - 11:04 PM

I remember parts of this song:

The spades go two lips together
tie them together
bring back my love to me.

What is the me-ee-eening
of all these flow-er-er-ers
they tel the sto-or-or-y,
the story of love,
from me to you.

I saw the ship sail away,
it sailed three years and a day,
my love is far far away,
and I love him so, oh yes I do.

My heart goes bump ba de dump bump,
bump ba de dump bump,
over my love for you.

You are my one and only,
I love you passionately,
..........


I never thought about the meaning of these lyrics when I was young. Now when I search to find the lyrics I see posts referring to them as racist. I wonder though whether this was a song by black people about slaves being sold and separated. Does anyone know the rest of the lyrics and/or know the origin of this song?

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,Patsy Warren
Date: 20 Jul 10 - 07:43 AM

This was a way to get us to eat our prunes by counting the stones after by counting each stone to these rhymes:-

Lady, baby, gypsy, queen,
Elephant, monkey, tangerine.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

This was a skipping game. Girls one side boys on the other.

Down in the valley where the green grass grows,
There goes Sarah(girl's name)as fair as a rose,
She grows, she grows, she grows so sweet,
That she calls for a lover at the end of the street.
(Boy runs in) Michael(whatever the boy's name is) Michael, coming out tonight,
Michael, Michael the moon is shining bright,
Put your hat and coat on tell your mother you won't be late,
How many kisses can I get.
Skipping rope is turned faster counting how many skips can be done.

If there was an election looming we had a skipping song how long ago this goes back I am not sure but in the 60's in England it was:-

Skipper runs into skipping rope)
Vote vote vote vote for Harold here comes Teddy at the door (Edward Heath. For Harold is the one who gives us all the fun,
So we don't want Teddy anymore, shut the door (skipper runs out).

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymesloo
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 01:24 PM

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,GUEST, Jennifer Martin
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 12:32 AM

When I was growing up in Chicago in a primarily African-American neighborhood in the mid 70s (This was probably 1976-1978) we used to do a song where a small group of us would stand in a circle and take turns doing little dance solos with different body parts, for example if Jane, Susan and Mary were in the circle we would all sing:

"Jane's got the rhythm, rhythm in her arms" and while Jane would move her arms around we'd all sing "Umm, check it out, umm-umm check it out", then "Susan's got the rhythm, rhythm in her hips" and Susan would swivel her hips around while we all sang "Umm, check it out, umm-umm check it out" and on and on with each kid doing a different body part (head, legs, butt, waist, etc.) we all agreed in advance who would do each body part before we all started singing.

It's 35 years later and I still get that song stuck in my head sometimes and nobody here in California seems to have ever heard it...

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 10:26 AM

Greetings, Jennifer Martin.

I rarely post on this forum anymore, but I want to share with you (and others) that my guess is that the game song that you remember is a pre-foot stomping cheer. Your entire description of how you remember "Check it Out" being performed conforms with the description of foot stomping cheers, except that you didn't describe the girls doing any percussive steppin' like foot stomping routines while they chanted those words (in between watching the "soloists doing their dance).Furthermore, I've collected other examples of foot stomping cheers that include the line "check it out". But that's not surprising since "check it out" was and still is a rather commonly used African American verncaular phrase.

"Foot stomping cheers" is a term that I coined for a certain type of composition that has a distinctive lyrical structure & performance activity. I consider foot stomping cheers to be a sub-category of children's/youth's dance style cheerleader cheers. I also consider those cheers to be a part of both the larger category of children's singing games, and the larger category of raps (in the pre-hip-hop sense of that word).

Traditionally (that is since 1976 when these cheers are first documented), foot stomping cheers are performed as an informal, leisure time activity, mostly by girls ages 6-12 years old.

Your example further confirms the documentation of these cheers originating with and being most often performed by African American girls. That said, the 2006 cheerleader movie Bring It On: All Or Nothing introduced much of the world to two examples of foot stomping cheers: "Shabooya Roll Call" and "Introduce Yourself".*

* It should be noted that the same textual structure and refrain found in the 2006 Bring It On movie was also used in Spike Lee's 1996 movie Get On The Bus. Also, in 1997 I collected an example of "Introduce Yourself" that is very similar to that used in that Bring It On movie, and I collected an earlier mid to late 1980s example of that same cheer, though with different words than that used in the 1990s example.

Click http://cocojams.com/content/foot-stomping-cheers-0 for more information on foot stomping cheers and for additional links to other related subjects.

Best wishes,

Azizi Powell

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,dingles
Date: 27 Dec 13 - 01:49 PM

for hotdog / weiner roasts we always sang (when no parents were listening);

Daddy's got the weiner
Mommy's got the bun
Baby's got the ketchup
Yum! Yum! Yum!

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,kenny boy
Date: 09 Aug 14 - 09:36 PM

Growing up in Central California in the 1950s, My Mom & Dad would say at the dinner table:

Order in the court.
The monkey wants to speak.
Speak monkey speak.
The first one to speak is a monkey.

It made us all shut up for up to minutes at a time.
In the 1980s it worked just as well on my kids.

I was surprised to find so many variations of it on this thread.

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Mar 18 - 12:03 AM

Ask your mother for 50 cents, come see the 3 ringed zebra... two around his belly, one around his... hold up there ladies, don't step in that elephants... shame on you little boy for sticking straw up that monkeys... ask your mother for 50 cents...

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,My version
Date: 17 Oct 18 - 01:07 PM

My mother recited your postman poem to me as a child growing up in the 70’s, but it went a little differently.

Policeman, policeman
Do your duty,
Here comes Charlotte
As a bathing beauty

She can do the rumba
She can do the splits
She can lift her skirts
As high as her hips.

Here’s another she’d often recite

Charlotte was a dancer,
She danced for the king;
And every time she danced,
She wiggled everything.

Stop! Cried the king,
You can’t do that in here!
Phooey, said Charlotte,
And she kicked him in the rear.

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: GUEST,Betty Jo
Date: 23 Jun 21 - 06:40 PM

Sixteen years later, I'd like to thank Haven for the post:
"What you say is what you are, You're a naked movie star".

When my little brother & I were too young to cross the street by ourselves, we used to sit on the curb with our feet in the gutter exchanging taunts with the military kids from Air Force officer housing across the street.

One taunt we liked to use was "What you say is what you are, like a moving poo-poo star."

It never made any sense, but apparently we had picked up a kid version of the original. We learned it in the mid-1950s on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

(Our beef with the officer kids was their habit of saying "Well, my daddy is a colonel so...")

Also the "Suffocation" song was a parody of a TV commercial for a game called "Fascination".

Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
From: medievallassie
Date: 24 Jun 21 - 02:33 AM

Liar, Liar, pants on fire! I tried to go through the thread to see if this one was listed and didn't see it...but this is a LOOOONG thread! I might have missed it.

A lot of the monkey rhymes were already mentioned but this is one that I recall:

Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
You smell like a monkey,
and you look like one, too!

I think I can relate to that last one... :-)