dreamshark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamshark) wrote2022-09-27 10:57 am
dreamshark) wrote2022-09-27 10:57 am
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What's the oldest children's song you know?
Not the ones that are taught by nursery school teachers or popularized by commercial singers from Hopalong Cassidy to Raffi, but the ones that are passed along from child to child through the generations. Jump rope rhymes, silly parodies of popular songs, slightly naughty songs that grownups are not likely to pass along (unexpurgated, anyway) and that kind of thng.
I started thinking about this while commenting to Laramie, where I mentioned "On Top of Spaghetti", "Jimmy is a friend of mine, he resembles Frankenstein", and the unauthorized version of the Notre Dame Fight Song. But based on internal evidence, I think the oldest one that I actually learned from other kids was this one. I mean, it has late 19th century written all over it, right?
Two Irishmen, two Irishmen, were digging in a ditch.
One called the other a dirty son of a ...
Birch beer, birch beer, ten cents a glass,
If you do not like it, shove it up your...
Ask me no questions and you will get no answers,
If you do not like it, you can go to...
Hello, operator, give me number nine.
If you cannot reach it, please return my dime.
I started thinking about this while commenting to Laramie, where I mentioned "On Top of Spaghetti", "Jimmy is a friend of mine, he resembles Frankenstein", and the unauthorized version of the Notre Dame Fight Song. But based on internal evidence, I think the oldest one that I actually learned from other kids was this one. I mean, it has late 19th century written all over it, right?
Two Irishmen, two Irishmen, were digging in a ditch.
One called the other a dirty son of a ...
Birch beer, birch beer, ten cents a glass,
If you do not like it, shove it up your...
Ask me no questions and you will get no answers,
If you do not like it, you can go to...
Hello, operator, give me number nine.
If you cannot reach it, please return my dime.
no subject
We did a version of the song other comments call "Miss Susie," only we called it "Miss Lucy." Ours didn't mention a dime. "Behind Miss Lucy's icebox" was sometimes "behind the frigerator," though it doesn't scan quite as well.
Miss Lucy had a baby, she called it Tiny Tim
She put it in the bathtub, to see it he could swim!
Miss Lucy called the doctor, the doctor called the nurse,
The baby called the lady with the alligator purse!
Hello operator, please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me then I'll just kick your...
Behind Miss Lucy's icebox, there is a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it and she broke her little...
Ask me no more questions, I'll tell you no more lies
Miss Lucy told me all of this the day before...
She dyed her hair all purple, she dyed her hair all pink,
She dyed her all all polka-dot and flushed it down the sink