Old Sayings and Rhymes from the 1940’s
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
October 4th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
My grandfather was always saying to me when I would wish for things in the 1940’s as a grade schooler, “If wishes were fishes, we’d all have a fry.” He had all kinds of sayings like this, but I’ll have to put my thinking cap on to come up with more.
Thanks for a wonderful website!
October 4th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Thanks for sharing. That’s a great one!
-Lisa
October 12th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Looking for an old rhyme that goes “When God gave out hair I thought He said …… ” it was making fun of yourself or someone, sometime in the late forties and fifties.
December 11th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Would like to know if anyone knows of an old ryhme or poem that starts out Mary Marlar jumped in the fire
The fire was so hot she jumped in the pot
The pot was so hot she jumped in the crack
I may have some of the sentences out of order and there are more sentences, but they elude me.
My Grandmother used to say that to me long years ago.
Anyone’s help would be greatly appreciated.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
How funny, I was looking for the lyrics to a song sung in childhood, and I think someone here knows it too!
They must have put out a book of safety songs in the 1940’s, and it included a song that went something like this:
Go up to that kind police man, the very first one you meet,
and simply say, I’ve lost my way I cannot find my street
but I know my name and address, and telephone number too…
If anyone could help me fill in the blanks, that would be great…
What I am really looking for, is the lyrics to the song about the oil burner:
Outside, the weather is damp and cold, the wind has brought a storm
….
But the oil burner purrs and purrs and purrs and the house is snug and warm.
A click and very soon on it goes, though no one does a think….
….how I love to here it sing.
Can anyone help me fill in the blanks on these songs??
January 11th, 2008 at 12:55 am
My grandma used to sing me to sleep with an old song-
” I love you, a bushel and a peck,
a bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck,
a hug around the neck and a barrel and a peep,
barrel and a peep and I’m talkin in my sleep,
about you…. about you….
I love you, a bushel and a peck,
you bet your pretty neck I do!”
January 16th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
My Grandfather would always say, “People in Hell want Ice Water”
And when I would say “Hey Grandpa! where are you going?” he would say “Pigs ass for a ham sandwich” LOL, That’s my Grandpa! God Bless him.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:40 am
When my brother and I would say “I want….” my dad would tell us……
“You might want horns but you will probably die butt-headed”
February 26th, 2008 at 11:05 am
My dad was always whistling a tune as he worked and when I would try to whistle like he did my grandmother would say…
” Whistling girls, like crowing hens, will always come to some bad end.”
(never have figured out what she thought was bad about whistling!”
April 17th, 2008 at 9:00 am
my brother had a book when he was small in it was a rhyme hes just died age 61
ball ball bouncy
bingos in the bath
bunnys eating lettuces
up the garden path
moucies in the larder
gee gees rather lame
ball ball bouncie
lets have a game
anyone know it !
July 19th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
My mom used to sing this “lullaby” to us and I sing it to my grandchildren:
There was a little dutch boy who went into a store. He bought a pound of sausages and laid them on the floor. And then the little dutch boy whistled up a tune and all the little sausages danced around the room, boom boom. There was another verse, but I won’t add that here.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Does anyone know the one about “…Musolini fell in the grease…” It was a fairly long jump rope rhyme. Thanks.
March 31st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
yes i remember “ball ball boucey” so well. my mum taught it to me when i was small, i taught it to my boys and now they are teaching it to theirs but i’ve never seen it in print, which is why i’ve just googled it and found this site!
April 13th, 2009 at 1:34 am
All of us kids use to tell each ;
I’m the boss applesauce
Don’t be wise bubble eyes
I’ll cut you down to peanut size
And Mom would get mad at us kids I mean we knew she was really mad when she’d say
I brought you into this world I’ll take you out
And when Dad was mad he would say randy, dolores, tom. then my name
July 5th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
I can relate to so many of these stories, sayings, etc. When we, as children use to ask my dad where he was going, he’d say, “I’m going to see a man about a horse”; or, “I’m going to open a keg of nails.” Once I asked him what the red and green flashing lights on an airplane in the night sky meant, and he told me it meant “Don’t chew bubble-gum.” I can’t look at a plane flying at night without thinking, “Don’t chew bubblegum!” My mom used the expression, “I’m going to yank you bald-headed” when she was mad at one of us kids, and she’d call us by our full names..like “Sarah Ellen!”. She also told us that we’d “drive a wooden woman crazy”. ………and the songs? We used to sit outside in Summer, watching the fireflies; we’d sing songs like She’ll Be Coming “Round the Mountain, Goodnight Irene, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, and Wait Until the Sunshines Nellie…..wonderful memories…..
November 19th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I remember my dad singing “So long, Oolong, how long you gonna be gone? Now don’t stay too long, Oolong, hurry back home!” Where do you think he ever got that?! Also, starting out on a trip he would hurry us into the car with, “Let’s begin to commence to go.” He lived to be 6 days short of 94 and to the end always had a comment to make us laugh.
November 19th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
That’s neat! If you’d like to record it, I can post your recording here so we can hear the intonation!
Mama Lisa