Morbid Rhymes for Children

Here's an interesting fact I learned from David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed. In the Colonial era, Puritan parents would take their young children to view recently dug graves. They wanted them to be aware of the possibility of a sudden death, and to instill a fear of eternal damnation into them. I think a parent would be reported for child abuse if they did that today!

According to this site, children were also taken to public hangings, and Puritan ministers routinely told them that at the Last Judgment even their parents would testify to God against them. Nice.

I mention these things just to note that in New England childhood wasn't (and still isn't) all innocence and fun, and we shouldn't be surprised to see echoes of these practices show up in children's culture, like nursery rhymes and counting games.

I think everyone is familiar with the "Eeney meeney miney moe..." counting game that kids play. Here is a slightly more morbid version:

Eggs, cheese, butter, bread, 

Stick, stock, stone, dead, 

Hang him up, lay him down, 

On his father's living ground.

Here's another one:

One zaw, two zaw, zig, zaw, san, 

Bobtail, vinegar, ticklum tan, 

Harum, scarum, virgum, marum, 

Stringlum, stranglum, back and John. 

Playing jump rope also sometimes involves a counting rhyme, and here's a grim one:

Mother, mother, I am sick, 

Send for the doctor, quick, quick, quick. 

How many days shall I live?

(Note: At this point the child starts jumping.)

And this morbid jump rope rhym has been stuck in my head all week:

Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie,

How many years before I die?

Three of these these rhymes were recorded in New England in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project for the Works Progress Administration, which was centuries after the Puritan domination of this area. The other is from the 1800s. Maybe these rhymes weren't influenced by the Puritans at all, but I'm sure there is a rich history behind them. If any readers actually played these games please let me know your thoughts!

I also find it interesting that during the Depression, the government paid folklorists to go out and collect things like children's rhymes. Sadly, nothing quite that creative has happened during our current economic downturn. Who knows what weird bits of our current culture will be lost to future generations?

I found these rhymes in B. A. Botkin's A Treasury of New England Foklore. 

Some Weather Lore

I'm sitting here at my computer during Tropical Storm Irene. The weather's not as bad as some forecasters thought, but it's certainly not great. Pieces of my neighbor's roof blew into our driveway, and there are some random pieces of debris up and down the street.

In honor of Irene, here's some weather folklore from Maine. It's good for any time of year, not just hurricane season!

Rooster crowing on the fence, rain will go hence.
Rooster crowing on the ground, rain surely will come down.

I hope the rooster got paid extra for his weather predictions, because it sounds like people depended on him in pre-Internet days. Here's another rooster forecast:

If a rooster crows before going to bed
He will rise with a wet head.

The rooster doesn't have a monopoly in the bird world, though. Robins calling to each other, and loons crying are also signs of rain.

Animals other than birds can predict the weather as well. Want to know if a windstorm is coming? Check to see if your local spider is adding extra strands to his web, if the sea gulls have flown inland, or (if you're at sea) dolphins are playing around your ship.

Here's my favorite weather rhyme from Maine. Short and sweet, and a little spicey.

Sun sets Friday clear as a bell
Rain on Monday sure as hell.

This weather folklore is courtesy of Horace Beck's The Foklore of Maine.

A rhyme about crows

This morning when I woke up, I heard a crow cawing loudly outside my window. This little rhyme came into my head:

One crow sorrow
Two crows mirth
Three crows wedding
Four crows birth

I read this years ago in Clifton Johnson's 1896 book, What They Say in New England, a Book of Signs, Sayings, and Superstitions. Johnson traveled around western Massachusetts collecting bits of lore from his neighbors, and compiled them by topic (weather, plants, etc.) in one book.

I've never tested the validity of this rhyme by seeing what befalls me immediately after hearing or seeing a crow. I was sad this morning that I had to wake up, so maybe the rhyme was correct about "one crow=sorrow." This rhyme is contradicted by another bit of lore Johnson collected claiming "An even number of crows flying overhead is a sign of bad luck", but is verified by another that "To have a crow fly over the house is a sign of death."

Scientific validity probably isn't the point. Instead, these rhymes and sayings point to the ominous (omenous!) reputation crows have had in American and European folklore for thousands of years.

The rhyme is definitely catchy - it's been stuck in my head since I read it years ago.