I thought it would be nice to share our childhood songs and rhymes that we may have sung at school or play.
We used to sing rhymes to the rhythm or skipping or bouncing a ball or two balls against a wall and catching them.

Here's a cheeky Scottish one I remember.


No last night, but the night before, three wee monkeys came to the door,
One had a fiddle, one had a drum, one had a pancake stuck tae its bum.

This is one with a ball game. Someone is chosen as Alabella though I think another version has Queenie. Alabella turns her back and throws a ball backwards. Someone grabs it and hides it somewhere in their clothing then all the other players chant:

Alabella, Alabella, who's got the ball?
I haven't got it
It isn't in my pocket
Alabella, Alabella, who's got the ball?

Alabella has to work out who as got the ball.

For two years I was fostered because Mum was ill and went to a small mining town school where the ambitions of the majority stretched as far as the pit, the foundry and the local boot factory.( To get a job in a shop rendered you almost one of the gentry)
The education was basic and many kids couldn't read when leaving school, .But when I came back home to my parent's in Coventry I was surprised. Although I'd never seen or heard of a decimal point, or a fraction, the English I'd learned was far ahead of the Coventry school. Music lessons, which I loved at the small town school were far superior to Coventry too..
Every time I hear 'Nymphs and Shepherds ' (Flora's Holiday), 'A lover and his Lass', Waltzing Matilda' some Gilbert and Sullivan and also lsome ight opera's,amongst others I see myself as an 8 or 9 year old standing in front the piano with a group of girls and boys , ( even then I knew had no decent future) in that cold bleak school hall, singing away at these songs, the teacher pounding on the piano, stopping every now and again to point at someone out of tune or forgetting the words.
We sang them well. (I'm very nostalgic about Waltzing Matilda.)
I digress.
A skipping chant;

One two three alary
I saw my sister Mary
Sitting in her bumsalary
Eating chocolate dainty's

Doesn't make sense but has a rythm just for skipping.

I got a right telling off from my mum after someone heard me singing a rude version of the Trebor mint advert : -

Trebor mints are a minty bit stronger,
Stick 'em up your **** and they last a lot longer!

Cathi, what dear memories you have.


Here's another Scottish one.


Jean McPherson wis a person wi' lovely yella hair
We went thegither, doon the watter, last Glasga Fair
The rain, it did come doon in torrents, her hair she couldnae keep dry,
An' a' the day the streaks o' grey kept comin' through the dye.

Yes, Cathidaw- what a lot you have in your memory cupboard- brilliant and Thank you. I don't know- for me there are a lot of songs and ryhmes. One I heard and never got my head around was about sewing. Have any of you heard it or know it ? It started like this ' Up and down, up and down, see the needle going, up and down, up and down,' I cannot ever recall the rest but it has the most quieting, soothing tones to it and it is an old one.

We used to sing the wrong words to the carols and get into trouble for giggling.

While shepherds watched their turnip tops
all seated on the plot / pot,
A gang of angels flew right down
And stole the blooming lot


or
Carol, carol gaily,
Apples on a stick,
Two for tuppence ha'penny.
Come and have a lick.

We played singing songs in the playground, like
'Poor Mary sits a weeping' and
Lad and Lassie out a walking--to the tune of 'Comin' through the Rye.
'
wonder if children do that today.