This is Part II of a two part pancocojams series about the spread of children's recreational rhymes, chants, songs including parodies, and singing games throughout the world before the internet became available to the general public (before 1993-1994 and particularly before YouTube was first launched in 2005)
This post presents selected comments from four reddit.com discussion threads about how children's recreational rhymes and singing games etc. were spread in one nation and elsewhere in the world before the internet was available to the general public.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/04/how-childrens-recreational-rhymes.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents my list of how children's recreational rhymes, chants, songs including parodies, singing games etc. have been spread worldwide before the internet was available to the general public and particularly before YouTube was first launched. I believe that after those dates the internet and particularly YouTube have been important ways that children's recreational rhymes and singing games etc. have been and continue to be spread throughout the world.
The content of this post is presented for folkloric purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
****
SELECTED COMMENTS FROM ONLINE DISCUSSION THREADS
These entries are given in relative chronological particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
[All of the pertinent comments from these very short reddit.com discussion threads on this subject are quoted below.]
Source #1:
From https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4oa12c/eli5_how_do_elementary_school_kids_all_over_the/
1. Palacesofparagraphs, 2015
"How do elementary school kids all over the country
know the same playground songs/rhymes/etc?"...
**
2. expired_methylamine, 2015
"Media is a good answer, but also, let's not forget family
reunions and summer camps. Many families have sometimes even annual events
where they invite everyone over to read connect, and the kids can talk about
all the jokes and stuff they know. Also, lots of wealthy families send their
kids to overnight camps several states away. The kids surely have the time to
share their rhymes and things there."
**
3.Coastreddit, 2015
"People move, it may come as a surprise but trump is right.
People move all over and they talk to each other and adopt each others
practices when they like them.
You moved, is it that hard to think that other people have
done it to?"
****
Source #2
from https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/cfwp9z/without_the_internet_and_tv_how_did_children_all/
1. Iamjustjenna, 2018
"Without the Internet and TV, how
did children all over the world learn the same taunts, songs and nursery
rhymes?
There are hundreds of examples of
this but here are just a few
-Ring around The Rosies
-Missed me, missed me now you gotta
kiss me
-I know you are but what am I
-Cootie Shots
-jump rope songs like
"Cinderella Dressed in Yella..."
My husband was born in Iran and
spent most of his childhood in New Zealand and Australia. I was born and raised
in the US. He and I both heard the same schoolyard chants and taunts and I know
most Americans knew them too. I asked my parents and grandparents and they also
had heard almost all of the same ones too.(or some variation thereof.)
So what I don't understand is how
all of these rhymes and songs and such were spread around the world in a time before
the Internet or even television. Even with the limited travel people did
back then, how could these songs have gotten so popular all over the world?"
-snip-
This is how this comment was written in that discussion thread.
**
2. rewboss, 2018
"The first point is that they
didn't learn them perfectly. You mention "Ring Around the Rosies";
the version sung by most British children is "Ring a Ring o' Roses",
and where most American versions have the line "Ashes! Ashes!" the
British version has "A-tishoo! A-tishoo!" In India, the first line is
usually "Ringa ringa roses" and the third "Husha busha!"
How these songs and rhymes spread
was by word of mouth. Unfortunately, for that reason we have no details: there
are no written records until about the 19th century, when people thought to
write them down and publish them in books. By that time, many of these songs
were already centuries old.
People moved about quite a bit
more than we usually assume. Most people didn't move far from where they were
born, but enough did that these traditions spread.
There are some clues as to the
kind of ways this could happen. In the 1940s, a British visitor to the Danish
island of Anholt heard the local children singing a song; to the children, the
lyrics were just nonsense words: "Jeck og Jill vent op de hill, og Jill
kom tombling after." It's quite clear to any English speaker that this is
a corruption of part of Jack and Jill: historians know that during the
Napoleonic Wars British troops were stationed there, so presumably they taught
the local children the song, and even though they didn't understand it, they
sang it as best they could and passed it down to their children.
Travel wasn't limited so much that
the English language wasn't able to spread, even in the 17th or 18th century.
Picking another example from your
list, cooties is a very American thing. The word "cootie" was used by
British soldiers during WW1 to refer to the lice that infested them in the
trenches, and it was an American games manufacturer than heard of this and
produced a game called "The Cootie Game" in 1915, which led in 1949
to the much more successful "The Game of Cootie" (almost identical in
concept to a British party game called "Beetle" or "Beetle
Drive"). Cooties isn't as old as you seem to think it is, and neither is
it very widespread.
The nearest British equivalent to
"cooties" is "the dreaded lurgi" (or simply
"lurgi"), a fictional disease invented by a popular 1950s radio
comedy show called The Goon Show."
**
3. Iamjustjenna (OP; "original poster"), 2018
"Not sure why this was downvoted,
it gave a lot of good information. Thank you.
I'd have to disagree with you
about cooties not being widespread. Australia is about as far from America as
you can get and the whole "cootie shot" thing was around there when
my husband was growing up. His parents had heard it in Bangladesh as well.
The first point is that they
didn't learn them perfectly
Right that's why I said "or
some variation thereof". :)
**
4. rewboss, 2018
" "Widespread" in the
sense of "known to a very large number of people", not necessarily
"known to people on different continents". It's thought that
"cooties" ultimately comes from the Austronesian languages, which includes
Maori (the word is "kutu" and means "bug"). But the cootie
shot -- if by that you mean "Circle, circle, dot, dot, now you've got the
cootie shot" -- is, as far as I can tell, a relatively recent North
American invention, and if your husband and his childhood friends picked it up,
then probably ultimately from radio and/or TV.
It's likely that cooties are known
of in the South Pacific and perhaps anywhere British soldiers went during or
before WW1. Whether they are as widespread in those areas as they are in the US
I can't say for sure. Of course, your husband's story is complicated by the
fact that his family moved around quite a bit, and what they were doing will
affect who they actually interacted with -- did your husband, for example,
attend international schools in those places?"
****
Source #3
From https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rfngr/eli5_how_did_folkcultural_songs_and_nursery/
[Question] "How did folk/cultural songs and
nursery rhymes spread before records or the Internet?"
[This is the only response]
. Rhomboidus, 2016
"Prior to printing they were spread
by word of mouth along with other folk traditions. The invention of the
printing press however allowed music and lyrics to be distributed widely to the
general public. Music, storytelling, and poetry were very popular ways to pass
the time back in the day. Newspapers, magazines, and even catalogs often came
with music the readers could play themselves on a fiddle, banjo, or piano.
Simple tunes people could play and sing at home were very popular as marketing
gimmicks."
****
Source #4
From https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/jxeo6i/how_did_those_naughty_nursery_rhymes_type_things/
1. GravelGuy666, 2020
"How did those “naughty nursery
rhymes” type things spread across the playgrounds in the US pre internet?
Sorry, I don’t know what they’re
called exactly, but like
“Miss Susie had a steamboat, the
steamboat had a bell. Miss Susie went to heaven the steamboat went to Hello
operator give me number 9 If you disconnect me, I’ll kick you from Behind the
fridgorator”
And so on and so on.
“There’s a place in France where
the naked ladies dance and a whole in the wall where the men can see it all”
There’s tons of those “bad” rhymes
we used to say in elementary school and everyone I met across the country has
heard them at their school too. How did these all get around to little kids
before the internet was a thing?"
**
2. bullevard, 2020
"Childhood folklore is actually
kind of fascinating. Stuff would spread from older sublings to younger
siblings. People moved from town to town. Sometimes tv shows would spread stuff
too.
You may be interested in this
youtube video that tracks Jingle Bells Batman Smells across the english
soeaking world.
https://youtu.be/V5u9JSnAAU4
**
3. GravelGuy666 (OP), 2020
"Thank you for that! Pretty
interesting stuff"
**
4. [deleted], 2020
"The Joker sang "Jingle Bells
Batman smells, Robin legged an egg" on the Christmas with the Joker
episode of Batman: The Animated Series; and, according to IMDB, that episode
aired on 13 Nov 1992. The Simpsons episode referenced in his video aired in
1993.
The Joker did it first."
**
5. journoprof, 2020
"Travel was a thing, and family
connections. A kid in Chicago hears a rhyme and shares it when he visits his
cousin in Michigan, etc., etc. Regional variations would creep in, but the
essence would remain.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of
the coming of the lord, he was tearing down the alley in a green-and-yellow
Ford. One hand was on the throttle and the other on a bottle of Pabst Blue
Ribbon beer."
**
6. Haort, 2020
"I mean, people still had friends
or relatives at other schools back then. Life pre-internet wasn't a microcosm."
**
7. BackUpAgain•, 2020
"From older kids? Is that not where
you learned them? I went to daycare after school with kids who were all
different ages. Recess was at the same time for all the grades. Lots of kids
have siblings."
**
8. GravityTruther, 2020
"Andrew Dice Clay probably had a
decent hand in the spreading of “Naughty Nursery Rhymes” in the pre-internet
days. He’s probably one of my favorite comedians, definitely would recommend
you check him out if you haven’t heard of him.
https://youtu.be/aTKZRire8Wg "
**
9. AutisticTroll, 2020
"I often hear a lot of those in old
tv sitcoms and think “ah, that’s where ray learned that.” My 3rd grade friend."
**
10. kidfantastic, 2020
"Big brothers. That's how I learned
them."
**
11. GravelGuy666 (OP), 2020
"Lol same. But where did our big
brothers learn them? It just blows my mind that these rhymes started with one
child who made one up and spread across the country to every playground."
**
12. IReplyWithLebowski, 2020
"I’ve got an old book on American
folklore that has songs and rhymes that blew my mind, cause I remember singing
the same ones in Australia."
****
This concludes Part II of this two part pancocojams series.
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visiting comments are welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment