The first poems I experienced weren't in books.  They were the
children's rhymes, most of them jump-rope chants,  I heard in earliest
childhood.   These poems are also among the ones I have the strongest
memories of.  I suspect many people could say the same, but it's a
somewhat neglected part of our heritage.   There is, of course, a
significant literature on these rhymes, but they're hardly ever
included in anthologies, an omission which I hope any of you reading
this who ever gets an assignment to edit an anthology will set right.
I wonder how many people today still grow up with these rhymes -- the
venue of their transmission seems to be the group of neighborhood
kids, and are there any neighborhood kids anymore?  They're probably
all being driven to soccer practice.  Anyway, as an invitation to
discussion, I offer some from various sources.  How many of these have
also haunted your memory?

1)

Vote, vote, vote for (Suzy)
Here comes (Molly) at the door
(Molly) is the lady
With the bald-headed baby
and we don't need (Suzy) any more.

Few people I've talked with know this one,  though it's one of the
ones I remember best, perhaps because unlike most jump-rope rhymes it
was sung to a melody rather than rhythmically chanted.  It was an
"exchange" song:  in the sample given,  Suzy would be skipping in a
rope swung by two other girls, and Molly would take her place, etc.  I
remember being puzzled as to why this should be a political contest.
Intriguingly, a variant is recorded by Norman Douglas in his London
Street Games (1931), a fine and important book which is shamefully out
of print.

2)

Johnny over the ocean
Johnny over the sea
Johnny broke a milk bottle
and blamed it on me
I told ma
and ma told pa
and Johnny got a lickin
ha ha ha

How young they start.  Very commonly reported in the literature in
remarkably consistent versions, and very common in my Midwestern
childhood.   I remember being quite impressed by this trenchant
summary of the war between the sexes, perhaps out of some intuitive
premonition of how often I was to see it enacted in the course of
life.

3)

Salt mustard vinegar pepper
one two three four five ....

One of the most common skip rope rhymes both in my childhood and in
the literature.  The point was that after the first line, the rope
swingers would spin the rope as fast as possible (though sometimes it
would be done  solo) and the count would be kept up until a misstep
ended it.  One source gives this as the last lines of Johnny over the
ocean, above, and I seem to remember that indeed they were often
combined.

4)

Mother, mother I feel ill
Send for the doctor over the hill
Mother mother I feel worse
Send for the lady with the alligator purse

I don't remember this interesting rhyme from my own childhood, and in
fact I first heard it in Alfred Hitchcock's film Marnie, but other
Americans I've talked to remember it from their childhoods.  It's
fairly often recorded in the literature.  Iona and Peter Opie in The
Lore and Language of Schoolchildren give several versions from Britain
and the US, as well as a French-Canadian version.  Some authorities
remark that the rather sinister lady with the alligator purse seems to
appear only in American versions.

5)

Standing on the corner
Chewing bubble gum
Along came a beggar
And asked me for some

Go on you dirty beggar
Go on you dirty bum
Ain't you ashamed
To ask me for my gum?

I'd forgotten this until I recently came across a version in B. A.
Botkin's A Treasury of American Folklore, but now I remember it was
quite common.   Childhood in its innocence accepts the blithe cruelty
of capitalism with unashamed zest.

6)

Virginia had a baby
His name was Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
To teach him how to swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
Last night he died
With a bubble in his throat.

When I was about five years old, I found this story unutterably
tragic.  Reported in various versions in the literature and from
acquaintances, though no other version I've seen exactly matches the
one I remember, above, which is grimmer than most.  I interpret it as
one of those evidences that sometimes breaks through from the
unconscious of children's fear that their parents will kill them.

7)

There come six Jews from Juda Spain
In order for your daughter Jane --
My daughter Jane is far too young
To marry you, you Spanish Jew --
Farewell, farewell, I'll walk away,
And come again some another day --
Come back, come back, you Spanish Jew,
And choose the fairest one of us --
The fairest one that I can see
Is (Dolly Hayes), so come to me --

This for me is the loveliest of all children's rhymes, though it
didn't grace my own childhood.  I only encountered it after I grew up
(I think that's happened by now) in Douglas.  I have a vague, possibly
mistaken memory of seeing variants in some book in which the suitors
were knights or an earl.  Could the first line be an echo of the
expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492?  Whatever its source, it
passes the Housman test.

These are sacred texts.

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   Jon Corelis    http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis

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