Origins: Madeya look

Subject: Origins: Madeya look
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 01:39 PM

The other evening, I pulled a trick on my kid and, when he looked, I said to him "Madeya look." As we were walking down the street, I remembered the rest of the rhyme as we used it when I was a kid: "Madeya look, madeya look, madeya look a penny book."

His mother said that she never heard the melody. When I told another friend, she told me that the rhyme they used in her part of Brooklyn was: "Made you look, Made you look, Stold [sic] your mother's pocket book, Turned it in, turned it out, Turned it into Sauerkraut."

Anyone else out there remember this sort of street ephemera?

Does anyone have any idea what a penny book was? Speculations so far include a book of matches (which would have been free in those days) or the little change purse that our mothers used to keep small change in.

Eric