After all the mods’ warnings about posting complete poems or lyrics, I wondered if you were being defiant, or had just somehow never seen any of the admonitions. Not only did the story sound familiar, it wasn’t until I got to the “quote atop this very thread” line that I realized the verse (“clunky” as it may be ;)) was your own effort.
If I recall correctly, it was my maternal grandmother (now deceased) who told me the story – I can mentally hear “I want my nose and two big toes” in her voice. Although the tale smacks of oral tradition, it’s gotta be written down someplace, but my Google-fu is as lacking as is yours. Sorry!
Maybe it was regional? My Dad was raised in Depression-era Chicago. Ice Wolf’s nod from down under kinda blows that theory though, unless he has some family ties to Iowa or something.
I’ve heard two similar stories; “Taily-po” and “The Golden Arm.” IIRC, I read “Taily-po” in a kids book of folklore; I first read “The Golden Arm” as a story told by a character in a young adult novel. Both stories end the same as the OPs, and they’re clearly meant to be told aloud, because they all end with, “Who’s got my taily-po/golden arm/nose and toes?” Then you grab the person sitting next to you and screech, “YOU’VE GOT IT!!”
Taily-po is included in this book. If your library has a decent kids section, you might be able to find the story you’re looking for in various scary story or folklore anthologies.
More from tone than from specific content I associate the tale with something Hal Holbrook told as part of his “Mark Twain Tonight” program which I saw years ago on PBS (I think). The story was something like “The Golden Arm” and had this creature approaching the house and uttering in a spooky fashion, “Who got my golden arm?” as it entered the house, walked up the stairs, came down the hall, into the bedroom, over to the bed, at which point Holbrook screamed into the camera, “You got it!”
It was enough to scare a grownup at the time. On TV, of all things.
Thus I suspect the story and its variants go back to early storytelling days with as many regional variations as stories like that accumulate over time.
Not to leave well enough alone, I saw recently on one of the cable channels that presents “art movies” some Czech thing called “Little Otik” or something similar. It’s about an offbeat couple being unable to conceive and the husband deciding to make a baby out of a tree stump. The thing comes alive and bullshit ensues. If you get a chance to see it, and love bizarre fantasy, it’s maybe a 2-star out of 4 movie. At least it reminds me of your story.
NZ had a lot of American influences coming in from World War II, and probably something like this drifted in, settled with a primary school teacher’s brain, and I was one of the wee nippers who heard it all of over 30 years ago. It still sounds damn familiar! Oh, and I have connections who were in California at one stage, but not Iowa, sorry.
My Dad always finished the stair-climbing build-up with, “And I gotchya!” and suddenly grabbing me.
I heard “The Golden Arm” and other similar stories from kids at school when I got a bit older, but the version that sticks in my head the most was my Dad’s with the somewhat more whimsical potatos.
So Mrs. WeHaveCookies just sat down at the computer for a few minutes while I was out futzing with our broken firewood bin, and found a promising cite.
