Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Girl Games

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For some reason I was thinking about this game that my friends and I played when we were little. It's one of those clapping games where two girls sit facing each other and clap/slap their hands on together/on their knees/on each other's hands rhythmically will chanting a song. Along with "Say Say Oh Playmate" this was one of our favorites:

Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack
All dressed in black black black
With silver buttons buttons buttons
All down her back back back
She asked her mother mother mother
For fifty cents cents cents
To see the elephant elephant elephant
Jump the fence fence fence
He jumped so high high high
He reached the sky sky sky
And didn't come back back back
Till the fourth of July July July

What strange lyrics! I wonder if girls these days still know that song. Some of the lyrics make me think it's very old . . . buttons on the dress and so forth. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Mary_Mack

I can't seem to find any data on when the song originated, though.
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2 Comments:

Blogger DJ said...

I *love* the wikipedia theories of origin. Once while shelving books at my college library I found a publication that traced probable origins for all sorts of phrases. Apparently to date "Okay"/"O.K." is still a mystery, though there's some speculation that shippers scrawled "O.K." on crates that were ready to be shipped to Oklahoma City, a major point of commercial transit. Who knows? I love this guessing game, though.

August 31, 2007 at 4:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

always interesting to read yoru thoughts linnybinny

September 1, 2007 at 11:23 AM  

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