Reproduktion des Originals: Riley Farm-Rhymes von James Whitcomb Riley

I had a little brother. His name was Tiny Tim. I put him in the bathtub To teach him how to swim. He drank all the water. He ate all the soap. He died last night With a bubble in his throat. Jump-rope rhymes, chanted to maintain the rhythm of the game, have other, equally entertaining uses: You can dispatch bothersome younger siblings instantly—and temporarily. You can learn the name of your boyfriend through the magic words "Ice cream soda, Delaware Punch, Tell me the initials of my honey-bunch." You can perform the series of tasks set forth in "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around" and find out who, really, is the most nimble. You can even, with impunity, "conk your teacher on the bean with a rotten tangerine. " This collection of over six hundred jump-rope rhymes, originally published in 1969, is an introduction into the world of children—their attitudes, their concerns, their humor. Like other children's folklore, the rhymes are both richly inventive and innocently derivative, ranging from on-the-spot improvisations to old standards like "Bluebells, cockleshells," with a generous sprinkling of borrowings from other play activities—nursery rhymes, counting-out rhymes, and taunts. Even adult attitudes of the time are appropriated, but expressed with the artless candor of the child: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch Castro by the toe. If he hollers make him say "I surrender, U.S.A." Though aware that children's play serves social and psychological functions, folklorists had long neglected analytical study of children's lore because primary data was not available in organized form. Roger Abraham's Dictionary has provided such a bibliographical tool for one category of children's lore and a model for future compendia in other areas. The alphabetically arranged rhymes are accompanied by notes on sources, provenience, variants, and connection with other play activities.

Eeny, meeny, figgledy, fig. Delia, dolia, dominig, Ozy, pozy doma-nozy, Tee, tau, tut, Uggeldy, buggedy, boo! Out goes you. (no. 129) You can stand, And you can sit, But, if you play, You must be it. (no. 577) Counting-out rhymes are used by children between the ages of six and eleven as a special way of choosing it and beginning play. They may be short and simple ("O-U-T spells out/And out goes you") or relatively long and complicated; they may be composed of ordinary words, arrant nonsense, or a mixture of the two. Roger D. Abrahams and Lois Rankin have gathered together a definitive compendium of counting-out rhymes in English reported to 1980. These they discovered in over two hundred sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including rhymes from England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Representative texts are given for 582 separate rhymes, with a comprehensive listing of sources and variants for each one, as well as information on each rhyme's provenience, date, and use. Cross-references are provided for variants whose first lines differ from those of the representative texts. Abrahams's introduction discusses the significance of counting-out rhymes in children's play. Children's folklore and speech play have attracted increasing attention in recent years. Counting-Out Rhymes will be a valuable resource for researchers in this field.