Cho-co-la-te

[asakiyume]

I love hand-clapping games; they're such a wonderful example of truly folk transmission through the generations.

While I was visiting my friends in Leticia, two of the kids were doing one. The rhyme went

Choco, choco
la, la,
choco, choco
te, te,
choco-la
choco-te
chocolate!

You clapped sometimes with the palms of your hands and sometimes with the backs of your hands--it was great!



When I got back to Medellín, at one point Wakanomori and I passed a line of people waiting for pancakes at a pop-up pancake event. In the line was a girl who was teaching this rhyme to her dad.

Do you have any hand-clapping games you remember doing, or seeing others do, when you were younger?

Comments

[dark_phoenix54]

I remember doing at least one. It used more gestures than the conventional palm to palm of opposing hands; there was one part where you did right hand to right hand etc and some other stuff. It started "My mother your mother live across the street 1515 Broadway street" and that's as far as my brain can take it.

[asakiyume]

Even just that little snippet is great ^_^

[sovay]

You clapped sometimes with the palms of your hands and sometimes with the backs of your hands--it was great!

Nice!

Do you have any hand-clapping games you remember doing, or seeing others do, when you were younger?

I learned a couple in elementary school, all from other children; I also learned a bunch of long-chanting rhymes that I think must have started as clapping or skipping games. "Miss Mary Mack" is the clapping game I remember most in the sense of participating and watching other kids:

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back
She cannot read [etc.]
She cannot write
But she can smoke
Her father's pipe

She asked her mother
For fifty cents
To see the elephant
Jump over the fence
He jumped so high
He reached the sky
And didn't come back
Till the Fourth of July

She asked her mother
For fifty more
To see the elephant
Jump over the door
He jumped so low
He stubbed his toe
And that was the end
Of the elephant show

"Miss Suzie had a baby," "Miss Lucy had a steamboat," and "Down, down, baby, down by the roller coaster" had lost their hand or jump-rope motions by the time I heard them, but were all so catchy that I memorized them nonetheless.

[asakiyume]

Miss Mary Mack and Miss Suzie are ones we sang too! And I'm just about a generation older than you, so that's pretty cool. But I don't know the "Down, down, baby, down by the roller coaster" one--that sounds like it could be a country love song!

[sovay]

Miss Mary Mack and Miss Suzie are ones we sang too! And I'm just about a generation older than you, so that's pretty cool.

I have no idea if they're still transmitted through schoolyards or day camps, but I atavistically hope so.

But I don't know the "Down, down, baby, down by the roller coaster" one--that sounds like it could be a country love song!

Parts of it sound to me like a mid-century pop song, honestly. It may have been composited out of two different songs or games originally:

Down, down, baby
Down by the roller coaster
Sweet, sweet baby
I'll never let you go
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pop
Shimmy shimmy pow
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pop
Shimmy shimmy pow
Grandma, grandma sick in bed
Called the doctor and the doctor said
Let's get the rhythm of the head, ding dong
Let's get the rhythm of the hands [clap hands]
Let's get the rhythm of the feet [stamp feet]
Let's get the rhythm of the hot dog [hula-hoop motion]
Ding dong
[handclap]
[footstamp]
Hot dog
Hot diggity dog

Huh. Very cursory research on the internet just now suggests that it was a specifically Black American girls' song that coalesced in its current form after the mid-twentieth century. It had definitely jumped the tracks to my extremely-not-majority-Black elementary school by the mid-'80's. I wonder what the vector was.

[asakiyume]

Wow, that's marvelous! And yeah, I wonder how it *did* make the jump!

[zdenka]

Let's get the rhythm of the head, ding dong
Let's get the rhythm of the hands [clap hands]
Let's get the rhythm of the feet [stamp feet]
Let's get the rhythm of the hot dog [hula-hoop motion]

I've encountered these lines in isolation as part of a theatre warmup!

[sovay]

I've encountered these lines in isolation as part of a theatre warmup!

That's great!

[radiantfracture]

We also had Mary Mack, and "Say Say" or, more obscurely "Se Se" ?

Say say oh playmate
come out and play with me
and bring your dollies three
climb up my apple tree
slide down my rainbow
into my cellar door
and we'll be jolly friends
forever more (more, more, more more, more more)

Then there were two other versions, in ascending order of scandal: Say Say Oh Enemy and Say Say Oh Boyfriend (which didn't quite scan)

And something that involved going around the cooooooooorner but that's all that comes back for the moment

[asakiyume]

I remember the say-say one! I remember the enemy version too ;-)

For the playmate version, I thing we had "slide down my rain barrel" ... which makes less sense than a rainbow, but there you go!

[radiantfracture]

I think rain barrel is the original! We probably just put in what we thought we heard.

[asakiyume]

But a rainbow is at least in the shape of something you could slide down! How would you slide down a rain barrel?! You could get into one, sure. Hide in one. But slide down it?

A mystery for the ages.

[sovay]

I think rain barrel is the original! We probably just put in what we thought we heard.

I learned a version of "We're going to Kentucky" that had in hindsight passed through a chain of transmission that didn't understand Spanish, because the line that traditionally runs "to see a señorita with flowers in her hair" had turned into "to see a Saint Theresa," which was rather more Catholically bizarre.

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, this is great.

And it does make you stop and think about just how many St. Theresas there are.

[mrissa]

Ours was "I went to old Kentucky" rather than "we're going to Kentucky," and it was in the past tense throughout (e.g. "I saw a senorita with flowers in her hair"). The important part of that one was:
shake it shake it shake it
shake it all you can
shake it like a milkshake
and shake it once again
OH! wobble to the bottom
and wobble to the top
and turn around and turn around until we holler stop

All of these were actions vigorously performed, and someone did have to holler stop at the end, the lyric "until we holler stop" was not sufficient to stop the turn around and turn around. It was a point of pride not to be the first to holler stop MOSTLY, but you could also triumph by hollering it abruptly and making your friend stagger in startlement.

[asakiyume]

And now I'm thinking maybe the lyric "shake it like a Polaroid picture" in "Hey Ah" has its origins here!

[sovay]

shake it like a milkshake
and shake it once again

I was explaining to spatch this is one of the reasons I find the random Saint Theresa so entertaining.

We had similar actions with normal variation of lyrics ("rumble to the bottom, rumble to the top / And turn around and turn around until you make a stop / S-T-O-P STOP!").

[sovay]

and "Say Say" or, more obscurely "Se Se" ?

I've never heard this one, but I've seen references to it! It looks like a composition that got out into the wild and became subject to the folk tradition.

[edit] spatch knows "slide down my cellar door." Also a response verse which begins "Say, say, oh, playmate / I cannot play with you / My dolly has the flu / She'll puke all over you."

I realized what I had seen in those lyrics was Peggy Lee's "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard." Which has the apple tree, the rain barrel, and the cellar door. And seems to be the chorus of a parlor song from 1894. I love the folk tradition.

[asakiyume]

I love the folk tradition.

It

Is

AWESOME!

[sovay]

And something that involved going around the cooooooooorner but that's all that comes back for the moment

spatch thinks he might have heard a jump rope rhyme that involves the phrase "round the corner," but it has been overrun in the forefront of his mind by the burlesque bit "Meet me round the cor-ner in a half an hou-r." Which we also have no trouble believing could have been picked up by kids who heard it as its own catchy jingle.

[radiantfracture]

the burlesque bit "Meet me round the cor-ner in a half an hou-r."

I don't know it, but trying to work it out pleases me.

My cooooorner might or might not be linked to the following sequence, recalled during tonight's evening walk:

Slammed on the brakes
But the brakes didn't work
So I gave a little jerk.

Policeman stopped me,
put me in jail
all I had was ginger ale
Pitch
Patch
Pepper!

(I think this is a skipping rhyme, too, and that on "pepper" you start turning the rope very quickly.

[sovay]

Pitch
Patch
Pepper!

Oh, that rings a bell, but just the phrase. I wonder if it was used for anything else. I might just have run across it in a book.

[asakiyume]

I definitely recall *some* jump-rope rhyme ending in PEPPER--at which point it went really fast. Love the "put me in jail/all I had was ginger ale"

[zdenka]

The girls used to do very elaborate ones when I was a kid in summer camp! I was never that good at them, though. I remember "Miss Mary Mack," "Miss Suzie had a baby," "Miss Lucy had a steamboat," and also one that started "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should" which is a line I expect would not be allowed in children's games nowadays. *g*

Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should,
like a--
ooh, ah, wanna piece of pie,
pie too sweet, wanna piece of meat,
meat too tough, wanna ride a bus,
bus too late, wanna [???]
[???] too red, wanna go to bed
bed not made, want some lemonade
lemonade too sour, and we have the power
to close our eyes and count to ten
if we mess up, have to start all over again!

(And then they would keep up the complicated pattern with eyes closed while counting to ten.)

There was also:

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
to see what he could see, see, see
but all that he could see, see, see
was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.

And I don't know if it's the same thing, but we learned a one-person clapping/hand gestures pattern in Hebrew school to go along with "David melech Yisrael".

[asakiyume]

I love the "X too Y, [switch]" pattern in "Winston tastes good," and multicultural hand-clapping games for the win with the Hebrew one!

[sovay]

bus too late, wanna [???]
[???] too red, wanna go to bed

We had a version which went:

Bus too full, want to ride a bull
Bull too black, want my money back
Money back too green, want a jelly bean
Jelly bean too red, want to go to bed

at which point it picked up with the unmade bed and the lemonade.

[zdenka]

That could have been it! It seems vaguely familiar, anyway.

[adore]

My favourite was one that went 'sauce potato chip-chip-chip, cream roll butter roll chicken roll spring roll YUM'
on 'sauce' and 'potato' you'd have one palm up and one palm down, and the other player one palm down and one palm up, which you clapped for each other: my up-palm on the other's down-palm etc. then on 'chip-chip-chip' you'd clap both your palms against both theirs.

[asakiyume]

Oooh, that sounds gesture-wise quite satisfyingly intricate, and I like all those rolls!

[adore]

It's intricate and hunger-inducing :D

[amaebi]

We did a different version of Down, down baby, and A sailor went to sea sea sea with a second verse that substituted "China" for "sea," for some reason. I know there was a third I didn't like as much, but I can't remember what it was. I don't think it was Come be my playmate, though I liked that as a song.

Our elementary schools had just desegregated when handclapping games came into my purview, and my classes were about 30% Black kids.

[asakiyume]

Our elementary schools had just desegregated when handclapping games came into my purview --Sudden cultural mixing! New rhymes and patterns!

[amaebi]

Yes, that must have been it— and I never thought about it till your post!

[osprey_archer]

This chocolate rhyme reminds me of a song I learned when I was helping out my friend Micky's mother when she ran a Spanish summer camp (although it wasn't accompanied by hand-clapping, but a dance). Now all I remember is the refrain, "Bate, bate, chocolate," but we all danced around the room like a conga dance, in circles because we were pretending to stir a pot of hot chocolate.

Recently, my mother and I were trying to remember the words and gestures for "Pattycake" so we could teach my niece. We had to sit down and handclap our way through it together to remember, but once we were doing the gestures it flowed easily. Then the other night, Tinsley's mom was doing "Pattycake" with her at dinner, and she had different gestures for the "Pat it, and roll it, and mark it" part! I love all the little variations you get in a folk tradition.

[asakiyume]

I love all the little variations you get in a folk tradition. --Yes me too, exactly! It's so clearly **alive**

[cmcmck]

Twere was one called 'one potato, two potato'.

[asakiyume]

Yes! I remember that as a counting-out song.

[smokingboot]

Oh my goodness, there were many! And I was bad at them all!

There was

Under the bramble bushes
Down by the sea
bum bum bum
True love for you my darling
True love for me
We'll something something
Raise a family
Something about a boy for you
And a girl for me
under the bramble bushes
down by the sea...

Then there was a one called 'when Suzy was,' and as you'd clap you'd sing the first line and shout the second, these would change through the ages of Suzy. The only bit of it I can remember were the daring lines:

'When Suzi was a teenager, a teenager she was
and she went
(spoken) Ooh! Ah! Ooh ooh ah!
I left my knickers in my boyfriend's car!

[asakiyume]

Kids' rhymes are so right-there! They don't mince words.

And there's something about mentioning bramble bushes that just makes it feel so very British to me--love it.