Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision- July 31, 2025
This is Part IV of a four part pancocojams series on a paper survey of children's rhymes, singing games, and cheer that I prepared and distributed to a small targeted population in 1999 9with a few additional surveys added in 2000 and 2001).
This post presents comments about children's rhymes, singing games, and cheers from some of that survey's respondents. In addition, this post includes one example of a cheer that a survey respondent added to her form..
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/07/categories-and-internet-links-for.html for Part II of this pancocojams series on this survey. That post presents the titles of the rhymes, singing games, and cheers that were listed in that survey, placed in their respective sub-categories. That post also presents links to pancocojams posts or other online sources for the words to these titles.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/07/race-gender-age-and-citystate.html for Part III of this pancocojams series on this survey. That post presents demographic results regarding that survey's respondents.
The content of this post is presented for folkloric, socio-cultural, and recreational purposes.
Thanks to all those who participated in this survey. Thanks to Tazi Hughes for helping me distribute these surveys in 1999 and tabulate their results between July 23-28, 2025. Thanks also to Marimba Johnson for distributing this survey to a small number of people in the Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area in 2001.
-snip-
As a reminder, on July 23, 2025, I found 112 completed survey forms for a survey on people's familiarity with 41 somewhat randomly selected titles of American English children's rhymes, singing games, and cheers. ("Cheers" here means a sub-category of children's cheerleader cheers that I referred in that survey as "sidewalk cheers", but which I later -apart from that survey- refer to as "foot stomping cheers."
This survey also included the title of what is now known as a children's camp song ("Ah Boom Chicka Boom"), a traditional African American folk song/dance song ("Juba"), and an African American religious song that has been included in a few records of American children's folk songs ("So Glad I'm Here").
My daughter Tazi Hughes and I tabulated by hand these surveys for the first time between July 23, 2025 and July 28, 2025.
My heartfelt thanks to all of this survey's participants and My sincerest apologies to all of the participants of this survey for my lack of attention to this survey project
****
SELECTED RESPONDENTS' COMMENTS AND EXAMPLES
These quotes are given in numerical order, based on the assigned number that I gave to each respondent's survey form.
In this post the survey questions and directions are given in bold font and the commenter's response is given in regular font.
AA= African American
F= Female
Pittsburgh= Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
****
number #2
Date completed survey 12-15-2001
Gender -F
Race- AA
Age- over 35 years
City/State- Grew up in Columbus, Ohio
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"The words seem to be more mature, less elementary; some have more suggestive sexual undertones."
****
number #3
Date completed survey 12-15-2001
Gender -F
Race- AA
Age- over 35 years
City/State- Grew up in
Fredericksburg, Virginia
WHAT
CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"They are far more vulgar than they were when we were kids. Most of these rhymes
appear to be relative to their geographic location. Also their words appear to
be more grown up with sexual content."
number #10
Date completed survey 11-5-99
Gender -F
Race- African American
Age- over 35 years
City/State-Duquesne, PA
COMMENTS
"performed cheers from age 13 to age 17 years"
number #12
Date completed survey 11-5-1999
Gender -F
Race- AA
Age- 26-35 years
City/State- Pittsburgh
Have your every played any hand clap rhymes -"yes"
name two of your favorite hand clap rhymes: "Miss Mary Mack; Can You Dig It"Have you ever performed cheers -"no"
“In answering this question/survey I was reminded about the happy tomes, growing up in the city & older children teaching and serving as mentors. The rhymes return easily and quickly. It was a pleasure to complete this form.
As an adult I step and hand clap with my children. It helps to bond and create an atmosphere that promotes understanding."
****
number #13
Date completed survey 10-30-99
Gender -F
Race- AA
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- Pittsburgh
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"More explicit language"
****
number #16
Date completed survey 10-30-99
Gender -F
Race- AA
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- Uniontown, PA
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"Girls/boys do more acrobatic moves than they did before"
Have your every played any hand clap rhymes – "yes"
age stopped doing hand clap rhymes -"12"
Have you ever performed cheers -"yes"
Age stopped doing cheers -"14"
****
number #17
Date completed survey 10-30-99
Gender -F
Race- AA
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- Pittsburgh
Have your every played any hand clap rhymes – "yes"
name two of your favorite hand clap rhymes: "Twee Lee lee"
Year you stopped playing hand clap rhymes -"13"
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"Cheers and hand games are more for adults. If you examine the language being
said in hand games, you will see that we did not know what we were actually saying"
****
number #20
Date completed survey 10-30-99
Gender -F
Race-Caucasian
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- New Wilmington, PA
Have your every played any hand clap rhymes – "yes"
name two of your favorite hand clap rhymes: "Chinese
Restaurant, Friends cheers"
Year you stopped playing hand clap rhymes -"15"
Have you ever performed cheers -"yes"
Favorite cheers: "Ungawa". -"M.U.S.T.A.N.G.S"
Year when you stopped performing cheers -"18"
Favorite cheer-"Dig It", "We Want You To Rock It"
Year when you stopped performing cheers -"19"
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"I really haven’t noticed any differences because I’m not in the same
environment any more."
****
number #21
Date completed survey 11-5-99
Gender -F
Race- African American
Age- 26- 35 years
City/State-Ambridge, PA
COMMENT
"I never
played hand clap rhymes or performed cheers"
****
number #25
Date completed survey 11-10-99
Gender F
Race- Caucasian
Age- over 35 years
City/State-Pittsburgh, PA
OTHER COMMENTS
"Shimmy Shimmy Co Co Pa – comment “That was a
song on the radio (lte 50s/early 60s)
Tweeleelee-remembers Rockin Robin"
****
Number #59
Date completed survey 11-9-99
Gender -F
Race- Caucasian
Age- over 35 years
City/State-Pittsburgh, PA
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"none,
I don’t know many. When I was young
being a Caucasian, I didn’t participate in the games of my African American
friends. They did the Double Dutch jump rope A lot and it looked too HARD!! "
****
number #78
Date completed survey 11-13-99
Gender -F
Race- Caucasian
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- Pittsburgh
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"Many
are not as bad of connotations as being lots used to be racist or say bad
things."
****
number #81
Date completed survey 11-9-99
Gender -F
Race- African American
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- Pittsburgh
FAMILIARITY WITH RHYMES
[Pancocojams Editor's Note: This survey respondent didn't check any titles.]
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"Not
in these, but there is more profanity."
****
number #85
Date completed survey 11-17-99
Gender -F
Race- African American
Age—26-35 years
City/State- Uniontown, Pennsylvania
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"I
don’t really hear any of these things now."
****
number #86
Date completed survey 11-17-99
Gender -F
Race- Caucasian
Age- 17-25 years
City/State- Pittsburgh
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"Actually,
I think they stay pretty traditional throughout the years, but it’s been a
while."
****
number #92
Date completed survey 11-17-99
Gender -F
Race- Caucasian
Age- 17-25
City/State-Washington, D.C (hometown)
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"More modern slang- a lot of the hokey -ol fashioned slang is gone."
****
Number #98
Date completed survey 11-30-99
Gender -F
Race-Caucasian
Age- over 35 years
City/State-Pittsburgh, PA
WHAT CHANGES IF ANY DO YOUR FIND IN CURRENT RHYMES?
"My memory of rhymes is pretty poor-worse as I
age, I guess, and there weren’t many girls in my immediate neighborhood when I
was small. "
****
number #110
Date completed survey no date given
Gender -f
Race- Asian Caucasian
Age-under over 35 years
City/State- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
COMMENT [written next to the list of titles]
"We used to do hand clap rhymes at camp. I don't remember most of them except for one called "Hollywood Rhythm".
Never did sidewalk cheers.
Used to have chants for jumping rope but have no recollection of any of these..
[The only title that this respondent checked was "Who Stole The Cookie From The Cookie Jar"-. She wrote: "We used to do this one too". She also added these words for "Hollywood Rhythm":
"Holly-wood
Rhy-theme
Names of _______
(Someone chooses the topic and everyone in the circle would have to come up with
something to fill in. This was done while clapping hands and snapping fingers."
****
Number #117
Date completed survey 12-1-99
Gender-F
Race- African American
Age- 26-35
City/State- Mitchelville, MD
COMMENT - EXAMPLE
Party, Party, Party – Party
[repeat 4 times]
My name is __
walkin
Talkin
Talkin to
Guess who
Not you
He is so fine
He is all mine
He is so cute
Me too
[There are nastier versions]
-snip-
This is the way this comment was written on that form.
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This concludes Part IV of this pancocojams series.
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
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