h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I never heard about bears. Some children said, 'Step on a crack, break your mother's back,' but we thought that was rude.

Hey, folks, be sure to stop by A87797713 and leave a message of welcome to a new writer in the AWW.

That step on the crack is not nice, I had a google and found worse one.

Step on a crack and your mother will turn black. This was common in 1950s. The only reaon I am sharing that depressing one is that it reminded of another one, step on a crack and you'll marry a Jack.

Being a child of the 70's, I wondered if Jack was subbed for black reflecting an attitude change and that your Mother turning black was no longer acceptable in playground talk.

Like the counting song,

One two three four five, once I caught a fish alive,
Six, seven,eight, nine ten then I let it go again,
Why did you let it go?
Because it bit my finger so.

My Aunt was shocked that we sang this because she said the word fish had been traded in and the N-word traded out. Even though we sang it in all innocence, she told us because of the old connetations we shouldn't sing it all and explained why. This was the first lesson about racism I had in my life and it is amongst my youngest childhood memories.

I am not sure about the reliability of my childhood memory as I have tried a quick google like a minute or two but nothing came to the top of the list but the search terms bring up minging stuff so I have ran away, I have another go later, maybe after phoning my Aunt.

Long post but it is quite incredible all the different avenues where one comment like 'step on a crack' can go

and for getting through all that

mmm, the swapping of Jack is a massive stretch. I don't really know how i got there

As a child, marrying a Jack didn't strike me as a necessarily bad thing, it could be really good so it didn't make sense at all but then I am trying to make sense of nonsense, hmmm, ho hum


You see

Step on a crack marry a rat
Tread in the square marry a bear
Stay on the line,you'll be fine

makes perfect sense doesn't it

*brews more

I wasn't aware of the racist possibilities of the tradition of not stepping on cracks. I suppose some people will twist anything.

But I'm off to France now, so I'll wish you hapy daydreaming until I get back.

Certainly does make perfect sense, darlin' .

That's a very insightful and illuminating piece of writing you just presented there on the subject. I have learned a lot! Thanks! Whoah, extraordinary....



I was always spooked in childhood by these kinds of things, nursery rhymes, skipping rhymes, they seemed to me to have some kind of haunted peculiary, dark undertones.



Ring a Ring o'Roses. Some reckon it was about the plague.

What about Rock-a-bye baby? When the baby, cradle and all, falls out of the tree?



Someone once told me that Humpty Dumpty was a political satire, but I can't remember who or what is was supposed to be satirising..

Humpty Dumpty to me was one seriously spooky egg. .

How did we ever survive childhood? . No wonder I disappeared into my own world when I was about two hours and forty five minutes old, never to return. .



No pavement cracks coincidences today! Phew.

Bon voyage mvp!

Blimey mvp I don't think you ever sit still.

Have a lovely time

Back later with nursery rhyme stuff

Morning

I haven't managed to get hold of my Aunt, so I am not much furthur forward with my eccentric cousin or the nursery rhyme.

CC nursery rhymes are thought to have historical meaning, although these messages are kind of coded so you didn't your head chopped off or burnt at the stake for making some political commentary or just thumbing your nose at those in power.

Much as we have seen with step on a crack, over time these rhymes evolve, verses get added, words are altered, or like chinese whispers they get passed on a bit differently or take on a local flavour.

One, Two, Three originally did not include the N-word, or a fish, it was a hare and it was devised to help children to count. So if the N-word got in there at any point in history it was an alteration from the original.

I'm still trying to place this memory in context, it might be a false memory but it seems an elobrate one, was it something American maybe, my Aunt lived there and was visiting, she was very involved in civil rights, as person, a woman and her husband origins were Jamician.

But my deepest fear is that it was something we picked up in the playground and that was what provoked the shock.

On a lighter note, did anyone else sing While shepards washed their socks at night and We three kings of Orient are, one in taxi, one in a car at Christmas time

In the US, the Three Kings of Orient are were trying to smoke a loaded cigar. Boom!

can you think of any others off the top of your head?

I am thinking of songs now, spring to my mind On top of Old Smokey and 10 green bottles. I'll spare you my alternative versions

I always find this sort of thing fascinating, through the ages, we have sang, rhymed, told stories, these can be layered with meaning or we have mashed them up or embellished them. It is a part of us.

hmm might have too much perculiar

'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school,
We have captured all the teachers and have broken every rule,
We have broken into the office and have burned all the books,
And we now hold the title of Junior National Crooks.
Glory, glory hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler,
I hit er in the eye with a rotten apple pie,
And her teeth came marching out.'

I think it's kid filk.

Mine eyes have seen the glory...

of that song in full and your version of it,thank you Dmitri

I think I am going to learn it

now that you have mentioned it I only have fragments of,
the ruler broke in half, the kids began to laugh, and have no idea what happened after that

whatever yours is so much better

Thank the naughty children of Macon elementary School.

I remember as a jump rope rhyme :

Rich man, poor man,beggarman, thief,
doctor, lawyer, Indian chief


endless repeated until you were OUT ---presumably marriage partner predicitions ----before we got girrrrl power to get our own professions. Not as funny as the above.

What??? . These are amazing. I am entering a long forgotten world. I feel pale and faint. . Love it.



I do remember my mother rather tragically counting prune stones with the 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief'. rhyme. We didn't get the Indian Chiefs in the UK version. Wah. I could have done with an Indian Chief to add some romance. .

Last night I was remembering the 60s illustrations in nursery rhyme books. They were just as scary as the lyrics. .

I remember we had this book of Breton folktales and nursery rhymes, which my father brought back from a holiday in France. They were really scary. There was a record to go with it, scary French songs. There was a picture of a murderous butcher, which I can remember so vividly I think I might faint right now. .

Le Bon Roi Dagobert ...

Ohmigod that was one of the songs, it just came back to me. Roi Dagobert wasn't the murderous butcher though. Who on earth was Roi Dagobert? The murderous butcher wore blood spattered clogs.



I tended to retreat to strange things like my Gran's gardening catalogues and old magazines, rather than nursery rhyme books. I blame the murderous butcher. . And Humpty Dumpty. And the four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

French songs sound nasty.

King Dagobert, of course, was the last Merovingian king. Father of tinfoil-hat theories.

Merovingian kings preceded the Carolingians. Conspiracy theory: the Carolingians murdered them.

Merovingians were named for a possibly mythical king called Merovee. Allegedly, one of his parents was a fish, or some such. Conspiracy theory: this all had to do with the da Vinci code, even though da Vinci wouldn't be born for centuries yet.

You really should read 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail', in which a couple of Englishmen get run around by French conspiracy nuts, and conclude that Jesus' children ended up in Belgium, or similar, and it was all about the Templars and the Masons and Otto von Hapsburg of the EU.

I found the song, though, with words and animation. This is seriously creepy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKjdSjNgRU

Momeeeee! That's the song alright. Now I remember everything in a vivid, lurid light.



Really? King Dagobert? Merovingian? And I don't think you're writing scifi here, I think this is fact ... how extraordinary!!

If you find the murderous butcher song ..

Could it have been this? (scary link warning ....)

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/saint-nicolas/

Surely not. And not the same drawings. My murderous butcher had red hair. And clogs.

Hmm, well further research suggests that this must have been the murderous butcher song. It seems to be a whole big deal, to do with St Nicholas, who brings the kids back to life. Well, thanks St Nicholas. Are you Santa Claus? I think you might be related. I don't remember the piccies of St Nicholas.

Well, having sorted that one out, I shall now lay me down to a nice night of nursery rhyme nightmares. .

One of Merovee's parents was a fish??

Sorry, just having flashbacks there. That's a peculiar novel in itself, that paragraph you wrote. .

What's so creepy about the King Dagobert song? Because the devil is in it? Do you folks understand the lyrics?