Ball Bouncing Rhymes | Mama Lisa's World Blog

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: How High Can You Do?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Buckle My Shoe Illustration

In my last blog post, I gave a couple of variations of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe that go up to the number twenty. It’s rare that this rhyme goes past that. When it does, it seems to be to play it as a ball bouncing game… how high can you go bouncing the ball?

This whole search for different variations of the One, Two, Buckle My Shoe rhyme, was all inspired by an email I received from Fran. She wrote…

Lisa, We used to do this rhyme up to 40 when we were kids. Have you ever heard the second part? I am trying to find the parts I can’t remember. Thanks, Fran

As I mentioned in my last post, most people know One, Two, Buckle My Shoe up to 10. Some people know it up to 20. Most people don’t know it past that. I myself had a hard time finding versions beyond 20. After some research, the highest I was able to find was 30. Given Fran’s email, there seems to be a version of this rhyme that goes up to forty. Do you know any versions that go that high?

Below are the different versions I found that go higher than twenty…

First are two versions that go up to twenty-four. They’re from Southern California Jump-Rope Rhymes: A Study in Variants by Ray B. Browne (Western Folklore, Jan. 1955). The first one was “Given as a ball bouncing game”…

One, two,
Buckle my shoe.
Three, Four,
Open the door.
Five, Six,
Pick up sticks.
Seven, Eight,
Lay them straight.
Nine, Ten,
A big fat Hen.

Eleven, twelve,
Mind your self (or, roast ‘er well).
Thirteen, fourteen, maids are sporting.
Fifteen, sixteen, maids are kissing.
Seventeen, eighteen, maids are waiting.
Nineteen, twenty, maids are plenty.
Twenty-one, twenty-two,
If you love me as I love you
My knife can cut our love in two.
Twenty-three, twenty-four,
Mary at the kitchen door
Eating apples by the score.
One, two, three, four.

[Original Source: Nebraska: Sue Hall, "That Spring Perennial-Rope Jumping!" Recreation, XXXIV (March, 1941), 713-716. (verbal changes only, 11. 1-2)]

Here’s a variation Brown gave on the second verse:

Eleven, twelve, in the well.
Thirteen, fourteen, boys are courting.
Fifteen, sixteen, maids in the kitchen.
Seventeen, eighteen, maids in waiting.
Nineteen, twenty, my plate is empty
(and sometimes ends,…
Twenty-four, Mary’s at the cottage door
Eating grapes upon a plate,
Five, six, seven, eight.)

[Original Source: Paul G. Brewster, "Rope-Skipping, Counting-out, and other Rhymes of Children," SFQ, III (1939), 173-185. (verbal changes only, 11. 1-2)]

Western Folklore by California Folklore Society (1954) has the ending simply as:

Twenty-one, twenty-two,
If you love me as I love you
My knife can cut our love in two.

The book 10,000 reasons for everything; How to win; Why you lost; Folklore supporting our best superstitions (1998), by William Carroll, has the ending as:

Twenty-one, twenty-two,
That will do.

Beverly Flanigan, from the American Dialect Society, posted this: “I only know the 4-and-20 rhyme as the ending of ‘One, two, buckle my shoe’ which we chanted while trying to bounce a ball non-stop without grasping it or losing it (I can still do it!)”…

One, two, buckle my shoe
Three, four, shut the door
Five, six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight, lay them straight
Nine, ten, a big fat hen
Eleven, twelve, dig and delve
Thirteen, fourteen, maids a-courting
Fifteen, sixteen, maids a-kissing
Seventeen, eighteen, maids a-waiting
Nineteen, twenty, the larder is empty
Twenty-one, twenty-two, my old shoe,
Dressed in blue, died last night at half-past two,
Twenty-three, twenty-four, last night at half-past four,
Twenty-four burglars came up to my door;
I opened the door and let them in;
I knocked them down with a rolling pin!

Finally, here’s an incomplete version of the rhyme that goes up to thirty. It’s from The Counting-out Rhymes of Children by Henry Carrington Bolton (1888). Bolton wrote that it was “Used in Wrentham Mass as early as 1780″…

One, two, buckle my shoe

Three, four, open the door
Five six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight, lay them straight
Nine, ten, kill a fat hen
Eleven, twelve, bake it well
Thirteen, fourteen, go a courtin’
Fifteen, sixteen, go to milkin’
Seventeen, eighteen, do the bakin’
Nineteen, twenty, the mill is empty
Twenty-one, charge the gun
Twenty-two, the partridge flew
Twenty-three, she lit on a tree
Twenty-four, she lit down lower
Twenty-five*,
Twenty-six*,
Twenty-seven*,
Twenty-eight*,
Twenty-nine the game is mine,
Thirty make a kerchy.

*Asterisks denote portions forgotten by the aged contributor.

If anyone knows of any other versions of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe that go higher than twenty, please let us know about it in the comments below.

Thanks!

Mama Lisa

Illustration from “National Rhymes of the Nursery” (circa 1895), illustrated by Gordon Browne (with a little graphical editing by Lisa Yannucci).

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Old Sayings and Rhymes from the 1940’s

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

I love to hear the different ways people spoke in the past. It’s similar to how I enjoy hearing different languages. You can imagine life in another time or place.

Quite a while back, Arlene Charest wrote me with some rhymes and sayings she remembered from growing up in the 1940’s. I felt these are important to try to preserve. Here are a couple, along with what Arlene had to say about the times…

I know so many rhymes and sayings from 1940 and during the war when we could roller skate down the center of a no longer busy street (no gas, no rubber, no young men), holding hands and singing, “Coming in on a wing on a prayer…”. We did a lot of ball bouncing:

One Two Three a Nation,
I observed my confirmation,
On the day of decoration,
One Two Three a Nation.

The other one was:

“A” my name is Arlene,
My husband’s name is Alfred,
We live in Albany
And we eat Apples, and so on through the alphabet.

My grandmother had an old victrola with the wind up handle and, “It’s a long way to Tiperarie; it’s a long way to go; it’s a long way to Tiperarie, to the sweetest girl I know…” and of course, “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover” which everybody old knows. -Arlene

Arlene mentioned other sayings in an earlier email:

“Go up to your kind policeman; he’ll tell you just where to go.”

-From NYC school system, to keep children from getting frightened if they got lost, around 1940.

Also, my husband remembers his uncle singing a rhyme:

“Sitting on a curbstone chewing Pepsin gum….
Go on you big fat lobster, said the little bum.”

And that brings me to expressions like “Eh Gads and Saints Preserve Us and For Heaven’s Sake” – nobody, boy or girl ever swore that I can recall, but there were many funny exclamations like these.

There were wonderful rope jumping rhymes and I am trying to bring them back to mind – if I had a word or two, I know it would come. Maybe one of your readers knows part of a phrase and I could then remember.

Just tickling our memories. -Arlene

If anyone would like to share any rhymes or songs from the 1930’s and ’40’s to help Arlene remember, please feel free to comment below or email me.

Lisa

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Posted in American Kids Songs, Ball Bouncing Rhymes, Children's Songs, Countries & Cultures, English, Languages, Proverbs, Rhymes by Theme, Sayings, Sayings from the 1940's, USA | 17 Comments »

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One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: How High Can You Do?

Old Sayings and Rhymes from the 1940’s