Ahem.
And the version I learned as a kid went:
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Red and yellow monkey meat
Little babies dusty feet
Two bleedy eyeballs rollin down the street
And I forgot my spoon
Don’t remember much of Kindergarten, but I remember that song and was wondering how many people it scarred socially in the years to come.
“EVERYONE HATES ME, EVERYONE HATES ME, I’M SO DISGUSTING I SHOULD’T BE ALLOWED TO EAT FOOD LIKE PEOPLE, I SHOULD EAT WORMS!”
I’m sure there’s been at least one person in therapy for that song.
And I never understood the little bunny foo foo song… But it was BOP for me.
on quick edit, I didn’t mention that both songs were rehearsed weekly with the music teacher.
Our version:
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Mangilated monkey meat
Little dirty birdie feet
French fried eyeballs swimming in a bowl of blood
And me without my spoon!
The version I know is:
Great green globs of greasy grimy gophet guts
mutliated monkey’s meat
toasted little birdie’s feet
French fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood,
Me without my spoon!
My next oldest sister tortured me one day by singing that song over and over. I actually felt nauseated by it!
Here’s a song we used to sing as kids. It’s sung to the tune of “I’m looking over a four leaf clover”
I’m looking over, my dead dog, Rover
That I overlooked before!
One leg is broken
The other is gone
One leg is lying on our front lawn
There’s no use explaining the one remaining
Is down on the basement floor!
No, no, no. It’s:
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Dirty dirty birdie feet
French-fried eyeballs hopping up and down the street
Mommy, I forgot my spoon
And the Dead Dog Rover song:
I’m looking over my dead dog Rover
That I overran with the mower
One leg is missing, the other is gone
One leg is scattered all over the lawn
There’s no need explaining the one remaining
Is out by the neighbor’s door
I’m looking over my dead dog Rover
That I overran with the mower
There was also this stirring poem, recited in an outrageously fake New York mobster accent:
Thoity doity poiple boids
Settin’ on a coib
Boipin’ and a choipin’ and a-eatin’ doity woims.
Along came Boit and a skoit named Goit
And when they saw those
Thoity doity poiple boids
Settin’ on a coib
Boipin’ and a choipin’ and a-eatin’ doity woims,
Man, was they poitoibed!
All you gopher guts eaters are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG: it is
Dirty turdy birdie feet
My local library has a book published in 1978 entitled One Potato, Two Potato: The Folklore of American Children which is a sociological study of rhymes and songs sung by children. I’ve only skimmed through the book- I’ll have to actually read it someday and see what’s in there. One of my favorites that I do know is in the book is one I had never heard before, but I find amusing:
(sung to “The Addams Family” by Vic Mizzy)
The Addams Family started
When Uncle Fester farted
They all came out retarded*
The Addams Family!
*Alternatively “I think they’re all retarded”
Continuing from previous post as edit window has closed…
My parents taught me Comet as a child, and I thought it was interesting when I later discovered that the familiar River Kwai theme also had a version about Hitler’s testicles sung during World War II.
I find it interesting that rhymes like this are still around today- a few months ago I overheard two kids playing around and saying “Ha-ha-ha-ha, I make joke, I make pee-pee in your Coke,” which I thought was rather interesting, as it was a still gross but no longer politically incorrect rewrite of the old rhyme “Me Chinese, me play joke, me make pee-pee in your Coke.”
Awwww… how I love camp songs… Some of the best times.
Does anyone remember one about sipping cider and kissing or something? That was one that would get stuck in my head for days on end.
AAAARRRRGGGH! I can’t believe it! You’re* all *singing the worms song wrong!
It goes like this:
Everybody hates me,
Nobody likes me
I’m gonna go eat worms!
Big long slimy ones,
Little fat fuzzy ones,
Golly how they wiggle and sqirm!
You bite the heads off,
You suck the juice out,
You throw the skins away!
Nobody knows how good you can live
On worms three times a day!
Sing it right, you guys!
I have never heard the “Hare today, goon tomorrow” punch line.
for me the song was sung by my older siblings as a prelude to bopping me on my head. Kind of the way Lt Col Kilgore played Ride of the Valkyries.
Nope, probably not a northern thing. The first time I ever heard the song was during a regional honor society meeting when I was a junior. One of the presenters decided to teach us the song for no apparent reason, and hadn’t expected to need to tell us the words or show us the gestures. Only about a third of the audience had ever heard it before.
I know this as “The Other Day”. One group sings the main line,(another echoes). Then, the verse is sung by everyone with no echo before going on to the next verse. I’ve shown the first verse with the pattern, the rest follow the same idea.
The other day (echo)
I saw a bear (echo)
a great big bear (echo)
oh way up there (echo)
(all sing with no echo)
The other day I saw a bear
a great big bear oh way up there.
He looked at me,
I looked at him
he sized up me
I sized up him
He says to me
Why don’t you run
I see you ain’t
got any gun
And then I ran
away from there
but right behind
me was that bear
And up ahead
there was a tree
a great big tree
oh glory be
The lowest branch
was ten feet high
it reached way up
into the sky
And so I jumped
into the air
but I missed that branch
oh way up there
Now don’t you fret
and don’t you frown
Cause I caught that branch
on the way back down.
That’s all there is
There ain’t no more
Unless I see
That bear once more
I learned it as Little Barney Foo Foo. But the rest was the same, except I cannot recall just what the Good Fairie says.
I’ve heard that one, sung the way you describe. I think I’ve heard “Sipping Cider” sung like that too.
It’s interesting that there are so many variations to these songs, and everyone thinks of their own as the “right” one.
When my wife and I started singing “Ten in the Bed” to our daughter, neither of us knew the version that I’ve now seen in print. My mom included the couplet:
They all rolled over when they heard him shout
And the one on the outside fell out
Which I’ve never seen or heard anywhere else.
Last year, I went to Girl Scout camp with my two daughters, and we learned Bog Down in the Valley. Since then, my six-year-old has spent a lot of frustrating time on Google, trying to find the exact version that we learned, and ending up in tears. In the version we learned, instead of egg-bird-feather-flea, it went egg-elephant-spot-hair-flea-end. I think the camp counselors may have changed it themselves.
Barenaked Ladies have a version of “Bear in Tennis Shoes” with a verse added to the end; something like:
And then I saw
That bear once more
Now he’s a rug
On my living room floor
Not unless the Jersey Shore is midwest 
I am certain most of you know My Bonnie … I got into a shitstorm of trouble because the only version of it I knew was DaNang Lullaby
Something about the whole My God how the mortars roll in and being in kindergarden during Vietnam sort of freaks out my very pacifistic teachers…