Gene, Gene, Made a Machine

If you’ve heard this rhyme in the last fifty years, you probably heard it as something like this:

Gene, gene, made a machine

Joe, Joe, made it go

Frank, Frank, turned the crank

Art, Art, let a fart

blew the whole damned thing apart!

It’s been fairly common in roughly this form since at least the early 1960s, but it’s a variation on an older one:

Gene, Gene, made a machine

Joe, Joe, made it go

Frank, Frank, turned the crank

His mother came and gave him a spank

Sent him over the river bank

That one was published — in The Clinique: a monthly abstract of the clinics and of the proceedings of the Clinical Society of the Hahnemann Hospital of Chicago of all places - in 1923. The last three lines were listed as a common taunt to be leveled at boys named Frank in a book of “New England Sayings” from 1894.

The “original” kept showing up in print through the 1970s, but some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s, the crew seems to have ditch Frank’s spank-happy mother and replaced her with Art, who brought even more trouble. Poor guys.

The above is a new entry written for the new ebook:

New ebook from the authors of PLAYGROUND JUNGLE!

THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO NAUGHTY PLAYGROUND SONGS and CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE 


Based on PLAYGROUND JUNGLE, but with new, revised, and greatly expanded entries. 

Only 2.99 on: Kindle or Nook Don't have one?  Read it on a FREE Kindle app  for your pc, mac, iPad or phone.  Or try a free nook app  for pc, mac, iPad, or phone Supplemental material: mp3 to: "The Burning of the School" (six verse version) and "Drink Your Juice (Or You'll Get Scurvy)" (right click to save)

The staff who brought you the acclaimed SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY (Random House 2009) is back with a look at the history of the songs and jokes you repeated when the teacher wasn't around, from Miss Suzy and her steam boat to the numerous songs about killing teachers, eating underwear, and coming down with the case of diarrhea, with an additional look at the dirty jokes, ghost stories, pranks and customs that have been passed from kid to kid for generations. Tracing many songs back hundreds of years (while debunking myths about the "origins" of others) using data from their popular PLAYGROUND JUNGLE blog, the guide is fascinating, hilarious, and will bring back memories for everyone. Those jokes are older than you thought!  With their usual "brainy but lighthearted" approach, theSmart Aleck Staff's latest guide includes fascinating looks at the history and mythology surrounding "Miss Mary Mack," "Miss Suzy Had a Steamboat," "Me Chinese," "A Boy's Occupation," "Ring Around the Rosie" (which was not about the plague, but may have been about a prostitute), and dozens more, examining their variations, evolution, and origins in soldier slang, 18th century tavern songs and ancient folk ballads.

In addition to rhymes, songs, and jokes, the staff delves into customs like "Jinx," "Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board," and "Cooties," as well as section on "wicked four square moves," with side trips along the way into the evolution of the word "poop," the various synonyms for "level" used by video game players in the '80s, and the history of fart jokes, plus the staff's trademark hilarious "assignments" and "experiments to try at home." A fascinating history lesson and a great nostalgia trip for children of the 80s, in particular, though it' will surely bring back memories for anyone who ever spent any time at a school or camp.

Stepping on a Crack

Here’s one that everyone knew to chant while walking down the sidewalk:

Step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.

This has been recorded in print since at least the late 19th century, often with a few additions:

Step on a line, break your mother’s spine

Step on a hole, break your mother’s sugar bowl

Step on a nail, you’ll put your dad in jail

So the thing to step on here is probably a bowl. Everything else will kill people or, at least, uproot your life considerably. One can survive the loss of a sugar bowl. Health nuts will even say that you’ll benefit from it.

One person I knew added another:

Giggle while you pee, you’ll turn into an old dead tree.

Stepping on cracks has long been subject to superstition. In addition to the danger of breaking your mother’s back, a 1905 book, Superstition and Education, lists several other grim superstitions: that if you step on a crack, you will have bad luck, or that you will not get a surprise at home that you otherwise would.

Many claim that the original rhyme was “step on a crack and your mother will turn black,” and that the superstition went that stepping on a crack meant that you’d have a black baby. Indeed, Iona Opie noted that that one was fairly common in parts of the UK in the 1950s, but there’s no real reason to think it’s the original, not just another variation that came and went. At the same time, kids were saying that if you stepped on a crack, you’d be chased by bears. This idea was invented by A.A. Milne in his poem “Lines and Squares,” but, from Opie’s description, was a more widespread superstition than the racial one.  You have to watch out when people tell you the "original meanings" of things - like the supposed "secret origins" or nursery rhymes, they're seldom true. And this is coming from the blog that connects songs about pooping in your overalls back to songs about making violins out of dead bodies.

These are all, in any case, some of those superstitions that no one really believes. While the good luck brought from a penny can be debatable, most kids figure out right away that people who step on cracks in the sidewalk don’t come home to dead mothers and don’t get chased by bears (at least not very often).




By the way - our ebook, THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE to NAUGHTY PLAYGROUND SONGS AND CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE, will be out next week, featuring new, revised, and expanded articles. Playground Jungle is being fully incorporated into the Smart Aleck's Guide family!

I Don't Wanna Grow Up (Toys R Us commercial parodies)

The Toys R Us jingle of the 80s and 90s inspired parodies without end, most of which were fairly unkind. The most common one:

I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Special Ed kid, My mom dropped me when I was young and look what she did! The rest is sometimes filled in with lines and actions from the equally cruel "Clap Your Hands and Stomp Your Feet." While most adults come to realize that their playground songs were not unique, this is one of the ones that everyone seems to think their own scout troop invented. "I Come from (Your Camp Here) So Pity Me" is another that people tend to think is unique to their own school or camp. Actually, songs like this that were memorable enough for anyone to be talking about them years later seldom stayed put for long. My own version, which I think I DID make up (though I could be wrong) was: I don’t wanna grow up, I’m an A.D.D. kid There’s a mil…..hey, what’s this?

With Nothing On At All

Hi, folks! We here at the Smart Aleck's Guide HQ are busily preparing for an ebook based on this site, and wanted to share a recent addition:

As widespread as parodies of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" have become, it would be a shame if there were no version about underpants. One common version at least comes close:

I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when it’s hot

I where my flannel nighties in the winter when it’s not

and sometimes in the springtime and often in the fall

I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all

Glory, glory hallelujah

glory, glory what’s it to ya?

Balmy breezes blowing through ya

with nothing on at all!

This is often printed in collections of camp songs alongside “God Bless My Underwear,” which I suppose you could say is a sort of companion piece.

This is another that’s older than people think.  It was widespread by the 1930s (sometimes in a third person version, “She wears her pink pajamas,” and with a “woolen” nightie instead a flannel one. 

But wasn’t a new song then, either;  in 1916 it was published in a book of “Harvard songs.” It appears in that book as the second verse of a “John Brown’s body” parody called “The Clam Digger.” The first verse is rather dumb, and has nothing to do with sleeping in the nude, then, in verse 2, it becomes an excuse for a bunch of Harvard guys to sing about wearing pink pajamas and flannel nighties:

THE CLAM DIGGER:

I know a man who went digging for some clam (x3)

and he didn’t catch a bally bally clam.

Glory, glory to the clam digger (x3)

for he never caught a bally bally clam!

I put on my pink pajamas in the summer when it’s hot

I put on my flannel nightie in the winter when it’s not

and sometimes in the springtime by more often in the fall

I just right into between the sheets with nothing on at all

Glory, glory for the spring time (x3)

when I just right in between the sheets with nothing on at all! 

(note from the smart aleck staff: shouldn’t it be glory glory for the autumn? So much for Harvard intellectuals!)

The book also includes a parody called “Glory for the Crimson” with which we need not bother, except to note that 1916 era Harvard men had quite a number of songs set to this tune. Newspaper accounts indicate that “With Nothing On At All” wasn’t original to Harvard, either - it had been going around awhile by the time it hit Harvard.

The Smart Aleck's Guide to Naughty Playground Songs and Children's Folklore will be available as an ebook very soon! It'll feature a lot of the research we've done from this site, expanded and revised, with an active table of contents, internal links for easy navigation, and other fancy stuff! 

"Bike" and other slang terms for genitals

When I was in fourth grade, a rumor went around that "bike" was a French word for "penis." This probably came from the "bike cup" that one buys in sporting goods stores. For several months, saying someone "just got a new bike" or telling them to "grab your bike" could get a laugh out of any of us. Was this just a local thing?

I know of several other things like this, in which a random word is said to be French (or simply code) for something sexual - the famous example all over the Des Moines Metro Area was that "shut up" meant "meet me in bed in five minutes." This was hilarious to fifth graders and groan-inducing to middle schoolers.

Butt Naked vs Buck Naked

Which version did you say? We favored "butt naked," but were aware of "buck naked."

Historically, "buck naked" emerged circa the 1920s (earliest print reference I could find was 1928), and "butt naked" came a bit later. There's a print reference to "bare-butt naked" dated 1959, and "butt naked" began to appear in print frequently in the 1960s and 70s. I always sort of assumed "butt naked" was a corruption of "buck naked," but I suppose it could always be the other way around. What "buck" meant is a bit of a mystery to me, unless it's a major corruption of the earlier "stark naked."

A Soldier I Shall Be

A few years ago I played a gig in a bar that was the last stop on a "hash." Hashing was a new phenomenon to me - the best description I've heard is "a running club with a drinking problem...or maybe a drinking club with a running problem." These guys and girls run around, drink heavily, then convent to a bar to sing "hash hymns," most of which are extremely neughty versions of old playground songs. It was so much like being at summer camp that I could almost smell the eggseronious.

One hymn was:

A sol, a sol, a soldier I shall be
two pis, two pis, two pistols on me knee
for count, for count, for country and glory
a sol, a sol, a soldier I shall be.

Say it out loud and you'll get a good impression of what's dirty about it, if you can't tell by looking.

I've since seen several variations online. Many subsitute "for cu, fo cu, for curiosity" for the third line (which works better if sung with a British accent than it does with an American one).

Another whole verse I've seen goes:

Harass, harass, harass them in the dark
each hit, each hit, each hit will find its mark."

I haven't found this in print anywhere yet. My guess would be that it started in the military and filtered its way down to the playground, as often happens. What versions did you know?

Snake Bites and Indian Burns

Kids at my school weren't THAT bad - I never saw anyone really badly beaten up. About the worst of it was that we all got the occasional "snake bite." This was accomplished by gripping someone's arm with both hands twisting both ways at the same time (ie, twisting one wrist forwards and one wrist backwards.) It could be moderately painful.

As of the 1950s, Peter and Iona Opie listed this particular torture as a "a Chinese Burn" or "Chinese Twist," and noted that in the U.S. it was known as an "Indian burn" or "Indian torture." My memory of an "Indian Burn" was taking a small piece of yarn, stretched taught, and rubbing it rapidly back and forth across someone's bare arm as though trying to start a fire.

The same torture goes by various names around the world, such as "Indian sunburn" (Canada) and "Policeman's glove" (Bulgaria).

What did you call it?

Salute the king...

Several versions of this:

Salute the King (military salute)
Salute the queen (naval salute)
Salute the German submarine (thumb your nose)

A close variation
Salute the captain of the ship
sorry, sir, my finger slipped

Both of these go back to at least the 1940s, and could go back to about World War I.

In the 1970s in the States, it had morped to:
Salute the king
salute the queen
touch the dirty submarine (the third line here ended with touching one's butt).

Meanwhile, in the 70s, Iona Opie picked up this variation, which is said to go back to at least the 1950s:

I'm a girl guide dressed in blue
these are the duties I must do
salute to the captain
curtsey to the queen
show my knickers to the football team

Opie notes that on the 3rd, 4th and 5th lines, one saluted, curtseyed, and stood on one's head, respectively (judging by the pictures in The Singing Game, girls still wore dresses almost exclusively in the UK at the time, making standing on one's head slightly risque). I have to wonder if this made it to the states as a rhyme about cheerleaders - it would have been easy enough to Americanize. There are American versions that end with "turn my back on the boy in green."

Similar to this is one that went around in the 1940s:

This is how the king salutes (salute)
This is how Hitler salutes (raise arm)
this is how a dog salutes! (lift leg)


These went around in many, many variations, sometimes changing names to include modern and topical references. Put yours in the comments!

See also: Charlie Chaplin went to France

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

It's one of the first taunts I learned - and the one that taught me the "taunt rhythm," the meter and tones that make any song a taunt.

_____ and _____, sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love, then comes marriage
then comes ____ with a baby carriage


The truly inspired would add on the following:

Sucking his thumb, pooping his pants
Trying to do the boogie dance
and that's not all, that's not all
he's also drinking alcohol!"

Other versions I heard over the years changed the pronouns around - it was usually one of the people from the first section drinking the alcohol, not the baby.

This seems to be one of the rhymes that EVERYONE knows (I understand there's even a Spanish version) - I've even seen it listed as a good rhyme for teaching Christian children in a home school as an introduction to sexuality (since it sets up the "normal" sequence of events: first comes love, then come marriage, then comes the baby).

Figuring out just how old it is is tricky - it didn't start appearing in print much until the 1970s, though by then it was already referred to as an "old" rhyme. A version including the second verse appeared in Texas Monthly (swapping "wetting" for "pooping" and "hula" for "boogie") in 1976, but in the context it seems clear that it was already considered old. A collection called Glimpses of Appalachian Folklore" lists it as a jump-rope rhyme recorded in Maine in 1961, and Western Folklore listed it as being common in California by the end of the 1960s.

What versions did you know? How old is this thing, anyway?

Tarzan, the Monkey Man

Here's one that was well known at my school:

Tarzan, the monkey man
got no brains, but he's got a tan

A more common version seems to have been:

Tarzan, the monkey man
swinging on a rubber band.

The Delaware Folklore Archives recorded this from a sixth grader in 1973.


Another Tarzan bit recorded by the Knapps in Indiana in the 1970s went:

Tarzan swings, Tarzan falls
Tarzan lands right on his balls

Jasan, a reader, sent in this variation he heard in Maryland in the early 1980s:
Tarzan swing, tarzan fall
Tarzan bust his titty ball
what color was his blood?
(The person that the caller pointed to on the word blood had to pick a color. It was usually red, but sometimes a smart person would pick a color that had the right number of letters for the desired result.)
R-E-D spells the word red and you are not it.

(Note: cheating at counting-out games has been recorded about as long as counting-out games)


Josepha Sherman recorded a couple of varitions:

Tarzen, the monkey man
swinging on a rubber band
pop goes the rubber band, down goes the monkey man
(Bedford, NY, early 1960s)

I can't help but guess that variations probably go back to around the 1930s, when the Tarzan movies were at the peak of popularity, though it wasn't recorded until the 60s or 70s.

Another one that Simon J. Bronner recorded, dated to the late 60s or early 70s, which was also known to Jason in the early 80s, went:

Tarzan, Tarzan, through the air
Tarzan lost his underwear
Tarzan say "me don't care
Jane will make me another pair
Jane, Jane through the air
Jane lost her underwear
Jane say "me don't care
Boy make me another pair"
Boy, Boy, through the air
Boy lost his underwear
Boy say "me don't care
Cheetah make me another pair"
Cheetah Cheetah through the air
Cheetah lost his underwear
Cheetah say "Me don't care
Me don't wear no underwear!"

What versions did you know?

Packing Snow vs Building Snow vs.....

It is widely known that Eskimoes have some incredibly large number of words for "snow," with different terms for all the many types of snow one is likely to encounter when living as an Eskimo.

In Iowa in the 80s, we kids knew only two kinds: the powdery kind that wasn't really good for much, and the wetter, heavier kind that could be used for building snowmen, snowballs, or (in theory) a snow fort. The former we simply called "snow." The latter was known as "building snow" when I was younger, and "packing snow" when I got older.

When I moved to Atlanta, kids didn't seem to have a term for "packing snow," since they only encountered about one day every four years. I remember hearing people refer to having seen "the perfect kind of snow for building stuff," but that's about it.

A quick look around on google books shows that the term "packing snow" is fairly well known, but it doesn't come up in print all that often. I'm not sure there's an "official" term for good building snow.

What do YOU call it?

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Burning of the School (updated)

This is widely reported to be the most wide-spread of all playground songs. Personally, though, I never heard it as a kid.

The tune "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is, like most folk songs, essentially a parody itself, a rewrite of the marching song "John Brown's Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave," which, after nearly 150 years, is still the catchiest song ever written about mouldering, and which, itself, was written to the tune of another song.

There's no official version of "The Burning of the School" - the first two lines usually go:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
we have tortured all the teachers we have broken every rule
we hung the secretary and we'll drown the principal
our truth is marching on!

The third line varies, but common versions are:

We have plans to hang the principal tomorrow after school
and
we cheated (principal's name) in a dirty game of pool

The fourth line, too, has a million variations, everything from "our truth is marching on" to "us brats are marching on."

The chorus is sometimes simply "glory glory hallelujah," but many change it to one of a hundred variations on:

Glory, glory hallelujah
teacher hit me with a ruler
I bopped her on the bean
with a rotten tangerine
and she ain't gonna teach no more"*

This part I did hear - the version I knew ended with "her brains came marching out," and I learned it from my mother, who would have learned it in the 1960s. The first two lines were recorded in England in the 1950s.

* - the last line of this version connects it to the ww2 era soldiers' parody Blood on the Risers.


Of course, these are just a few. Kay Shapero collected SEVERAL variations, particularly to the "I bopped her on the bean" line:


Hid behind the door with a loaded .44
Met her at the bank with a German army tank
Met her in the tub with a German navy sub
Met her in the attic with a loaded automatic
Hit her in the seater with a .50 millimeter
I shot her in the butt with a rotten coconut
I shot her in the hand with a loaded rubber band
I met her at the door with a hungry dinosaur
Teacher came in late so we sent her to Kuwait

The last line of the chorus also mutates:

-And my Teacher don't teach any more!
-And my Teacher ain't a Teacher any more!
-And we ain't seen the ol' bitch since!
-The school is burning down!
-Our troops are marching on!
-As we go marching on!

When i started this site, I had assumed that there must be more verses of this song floating around someplace, but I've never found any. So I've written my own - here's my version (with a slightly revised third line of the first verse):


Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
we have trampled all the teachers and we've broken every rule
we won the deed and title in a dirty game of pool
our school is burning down  (that's the original schoolyard version, though the third line varies a lot)

my verses:
We pelted all the recess aides with bouncy rubber balls
and took three cans of gasoline with which we decked the halls
and they we played with matches and set fire to them all
our school is burning down

We hacked the school computer and erased our failing grades
We slashed at all the spelling books with rusty razor blades
And threw all that was left onto the bonfire that we made
our school is burning down

The records that they had on us were only dirty lies
We never made explosives from the janitor's supplies
at least not til this morning, now imagine their suprise!
our school is burning down

The fire alarms are blaring now, and this is not a drill
if you haven't heard our story yet, we guarantee you will
we're the ones who turned the gym into a charcoal grill
our school is burning down

The hopscotch court's the only way that anyone can tell
the school was ever standing here, we did our job so well
and now the hopscotch players can hop all the way to hell
our school is burning down

We made darn sure that everybody got what they deserved
we forced all of the lunch ladies to eat the food they served
when we go to trial, can we be graded on the curve?
our school is burning down

Get an mp3 at smartalecksguide.com:

What time is it?

Among the many smart alecky answers to "what time is it" common on playgrounds nationwide, the two best known are probably:

"Two hairs past the freckle," (said when looking at an invisible watch) and

"Half past a monkey's ass."

Of the two, there is more variation in the "monkey" version. The full version, depending on who you ask, is either:

Half past a monkey's ass
a quarter to his balls

or

Half past a monkey's ass
a quarter to his tail.

I'm on the side of the "balls" version being the "correct" version - it makes slightly more sense. Neither is exactly a SENSIBLE thing to say (this is, after all, the point), but I think that if you're half past a monkey's ass, I don't see how you can already be a quarter of the way to his tail - presumably you're half past that, too, unless I'm picturing this entirely the wrong way (as I probably am). And, anyway, if you've already said the word "ass," why clean up the last line?

My in-laws learned this in Ohio in the early 1960s, which is about the time that both "monkey" and "two hairs" started appearing in print. Most likely, they're a great deal older, though prior to that most folklorists would have declined to print the monkey version. I'd lay decent odds that "monkey" started to catch on in the military first, while "two hairs" could have begun life as a vaudeville joke, but I don't have a good source on that.

What smart alecky remarks did YOU know for "what time is it?"

My Boyfriend Gave Me an Apple

Updated this post with some new info:

I didn't know this one, but it seems to have been fairly popular in the US, the UK and Australia over the last thirty or forty years, at least:

My boyfriend gave me an apple
my boyfriend gave me a pear
my boyfriend gave me a kiss on the lips
and threw me down the stairs

I gave him back his apple
I gave him back his pear
I gave him back his kiss on the lips
and threw HIM down the stairs



There are several third verses, mostly involving going to the movies (since all this stair-throwing didn't end the relationship):

He took me to the movies
to buy some bubble gum
and when he wasn't looking
I stuck it up his bum

Then there are (almost inevitably) underwear variations:

I threw him over London
I threw him over France
I threw him over Harbour bride
he lost his underpants

(This is often followed by a verse where he flies all over London, France, and Harbour Bridge (or the USA or any number of other "third" places) to find his underpants.

Folks, this is one messed-up relationship. Some folklorists say this is about girl empowerment, but I'm not really buying it. This is a couple that throws each other down the stairs then goes to the movies to engage in all kinds of deviant acts - it's either a real BDSM power couple or a seriously dysfunctional couple with no one I can really sympathize with (something tells me that that initial stair-throwing wasn't the first act of violence in the relationship).

But all analysis aside, how old is this? It's been appearing in print since the 1980s, but almost certainly goes back further than that - a variation was published in Captain Billy's Whiz Bang in 1921:

First I gave her peaches
then I gave her pears
then I gave her fifty cents
and kissed her on the stairs

This sort of suggests that it may have come from ribald rhymes about prostitutes - by the 1970s or 80s, though, violent rhymes were probably less likely to get you in trouble than sex rhymes (at least in the states, where violent media tends to be much more likely to be considered "family friendly" than sexual media).

By way of trying to put in a centuries-old tradition, maybe we can also connect it to a couple of old, old folk songs:

The first of these is "I gave my love a cherry, it had no stone." "My boyfriend gave me an apple" sort of follows the pattern of that one (and is considerably less boring).

But a more obvious, and far more likely, thing would be to connect it to the old Irish standard "Do You Love An Apple"

Do you love an apple?
Do you love a pear?
Do you love a laddie
with curly brown hair?
Yes, I love him
and can't deny him
I will follow
wherever he goes

This is essentially the same song without the violence - the playground version sort of follows the song to a natural conclusion of what might happen if you promise to follow a laddie wherever he goes (ie, he could turn out to be a real jerk).

?

What Does P.U. Stand For?

When I was a kid, I spent more time than I should probably admit wondering what "P.U.," the phrase we would exclaim when something smelled bad, stood for. I eventually decided that it probably stood for "Petrified Uch."

Now that I think of it, I haven't heard that expression in a while - or the shorter version, "pew," or "pewie" (Pyoo-eee), which I heard a lot as a kid. I don't think I've heard "pewie" since the 80s.

As near as anyone can tell, "P.U." doesn't actually stand for anything, it's just a drawn-out version of "pew," stretching it out to "peeyoo." Some say it should properly be spelled "piu." Others say that the practice of drawing it out until it sounds like an acronym was popularized by Bugs Bunny.

Using "pew" as an injunction certainly goes back a long way, though - it, along with "phew," was the subject of a lengthy entry in an 1870s dictionary of etymology that suggests it may have originated with any of a number of ancient language, which have similar words with similar meanings (such as the Latin "phu," which was a term to express the notion that something smelled bad, the Sanskrit "pu," meaning "stink," etc - note the root word of the term "putrid."

Now, what I don't think we really know is whether there's an actual connection - that we say "pew" when something smells bad because the ancient Romans did. It's also possible, given that similar words show up in so many different ancient languages, that it's more of an instinctual thing. Linguists really do argue about this.

Also of interest - "fi" was another exclamation that meant a bad smell was present. As in "fee, fi, fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."

When I was about 7, deep in my obsession with the phrase, I wrote a whole book about it, reprinted below. I'm sure the goodreads community would dismiss it as "a laundry list of stuff that smells bad (and an incomplete one)."

		(note: Eli is my little brother)

May Day Baskets

When you're growing up, you tend to assume that everyone had the same customs as you. When I moved away from Des Moines and found kids just saying "trick or treat" on Halloween, not starting with a joke, I thought "what are these kids? Savages? You have to WORK before you get your candy, ya commies!" But alas, telling jokes while trick or treating was strictly a Des Moines thing (though I've also heard of it in isolated parts of Ohio since then).

Similarly unheard of anywhere else I've lived is the practice of giving May Baskets. In Des Moines, these would be baskets (more often cups, really) of jelly beans, popcorn, fun-sized candies, and other little sweets that we'd make and decorate. On May Day (May 1), we'd leave one on a friend's doorstep, ring the bell, and run like hell. If anyone CAUGHT you, they were allowed to hug you, kiss you, or punch you (opinions differed). I wouldn't know, since no one caught me. I was that good, yo.

While not strictly a Des Moines thing, it was certainly less popular elsewhere. A friend of mine moved to Omaha in second grade; I remember his mother being shocked when he only got two May baskets that year.

Though this seems to have been a bit more widespread than telling jokes on Halloween, it's certainly not a holiday custom that enjoys the popularity of, say, egg hunts. However, while it's not nearly as well documented as May Poles or choosing a May Queen (neither of which I ever experienced, personally), it may go back just as far as those ancient customs. This 1878 book refers to it as an old Saxon custom brought over from England to America long in the past (while noting that the practice was much less popular in 1878 than it had been in the past). Other sources indicate that they were originally called "May Buskets" or "May Bushes," and were bouqets of flowers left at the door of a girl you hoped would be the May Queen on the way to the May Pole dance.

May Day has traditionally been a fertility festival, though by the notoriously squeamish 19th century it was more often spoken of as a "spring festival"). The sexual symbolism of dancing around a giant pole is about as obvious as symbolism gets, but the connection of baskets to fertility may not be as readily apparent unless you think about a bit (poles, baskets...I can honestly say it never occurred to me until right now). But that doesn't mean that May Baskets necessarily symbolize anything sexual - as with many Halloween customs, the fact that the custom may be SIMILAR to ancient customs doesn't mean it's necessarily DESCENDED from them. (Rule #1: be wary of any historical account that says anything has ancient druidic origins. We know next to nothing about what sort of stuff the Druids actually believed and did. The Druid angle in contemporary paganism is sort of a re-imagining).

The custom in Des Moines in the 1980s differed a bit from the old customs I've read about. It seems that traditional may baskets are hung on doorknobs (ours were just left on the porch). And we seldom used actual "baskets;" ours were usually either plastic cups, styrofoam cups, or, if your mom was one of those "crafty" types, something to do with construction paper, pipe cleaners, and possibly cotton balls.

And, by the way - filling it with stale popcorn was not cool. I mean you, John's Mom. Popcorn is just filler. At least the old "orange in a Christmas stocking" filler is healthy and tasty.

But, by all accounts, it's faded in popularity over the decades, and by the 1980s Des Moines was one of a fairly small handful of hold-outs. I'm not at all sure it's still a custom there now, but I have been hearing from other people whose children still practice the custom.

So, let's see how far this goes, and how big it still is! Did you do May Day Baskets? Do people still do them in your town?

Tattletale

So, what of he who DOES tell on someone for putting ants in their pants and making them do the boogie dance all the way to France?

The tattletale has been known by many names; in the UK in the 1950s, Iona Opie listed "blabbermouth," "tell tale tit," " "Beaky the Sneaky," "snake in the grass" (which may have led to the common UK term "grass" for tattletale), "stoolie," "trout," and "traitor," while noting that elsewhere around the UK, one hear "clat," "cripe," "creep-ass," "gobbie," or any number of unpleasant names. In the states, terms such as "snitch" go around, but "tattetale" seems to have become the standard.

Opie noted that the most common taunt leveled at them in the UK as of the 1950s was at least 200 years old:

Tell tale tit
your tongue will be slit
and all the dogs in the town
will have a little bit

She recorded several minor variations on that one around the UK. One that I found (from the US, I believe) in an 1880s magazine went:

Tell tale tit, tell tale tit
nobody loves her the least little bit

The above, of course, was sung in one of the standard "taunt melodies" that I should really do a post about one of these days.

By around 1960, the term "Tattle tale" was pretty much the standard term in America, and the most common rhyme was:

tattle tale, tattle tale
hang your britches on a nail

and

tattle tale, tattle tale,
hung by a bull's tail

A variation I heard on the cartoon Recess in the 90s went:

tattle tale, go to jail
stick your head in a garbage pail

Interestingly, one Dr. Howard recorded back in the UK in 1880 went:

Tell tale, pick a nail
hung by a bull's tail

The word "tattletale" seems to be relatively new. Digging through my records, it seems that "tell tale tit" was the standard term in the States a of the 19th century, when the "tell tale tit" rhyme was fairly common (enough so that it regularly appeared in collections of Mother Goose Rhymes well into the early 20th century). As of the turn of the 20th century, "tell tale tit" was still common in the states, though "tittle tattle" was also around (Mark Twain used it as a synonym for idle chatter), presumably gradually morphing into "tattle tale." At the time, "tattlebox" was a name for a gossiper.

Even adults don't tend to like tattletales. How many of us gleefully turned someone in only to be told that "no one likes a tattle tale?"

I'm Telling On You

The customs related to telling on someone are many and varied. As if you didn't know that.

Rather than dwelling on the many ways that tattle-tales are disparaged, let's have a look at some of the customs assosciated with actually telling.

At my school, when someone got in trouble, one would say "um mum mum mum." Sometimes this was done in a sing-song voice (each note getting higher before dropping off at the end), and sometimes it was a hastily spoken "um um um." I've no idea where this came from, whether it was just a local thing, or what. It's a tough one to look up!

Another popular custom in my town was to announce that you were going to tell on someone. When asked why, you would reply


Because you put ants in my pants
and made me do the boogie dance

If you were really pushing it, you might add:

all the way to France

This certainly wasn't unique to my town, and surely pre-dates my time, though I can't really trace it very well. The oldest book I could find it in was from 1986, which is roughly when I would have heard it. I have a theory that most people hear the initial couplet, and the third line just sort of writes itself, roughly the same way, all over the place, but maybe I'm just going out on a limb.

Where and when did YOU hear this one?

And did people say "um mum mum" when someone was getting in trouble in your town?