There’s been a commercial for a 100 kid songs cd collection running lately. It has all the songs you sang as a kid. However, there’s one that I don’t think is right: “Incy Wincy Spider”?? I remember it as being the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” (you know, where the spider goes up the water spout, etc). My wife remembers as “Itsy” as well. Besides, what the hell does “Incy Wincy” mean, anyway?
It means that they’re messing with the beloved songs of your youth.
Or maybe they had to pay more for the use of “Itsy Bitsy”.
-----:mad:
—////\\
(I always heard it itsy bitsy too.)
Have you ever noticed that all the little songs get changed. Most of the skipping songs I sang at six are very different now, I can’t even play along.
It seems today’s youth has no respect for the past. 
Yeah, what the heck is wrong with todays youth, anyway?
Back in my day, we had to pay a quarter for a game of Pac-Man. Taught us the value of money. Gave us good family values.
Nowadays, even our songs are corrupted.
Y’know, the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket ever since Madonna re-made American Pie…
Incy Wincy Spider looks like a botched spelling of some regional variant - Eensy Weensy Spider. I have also heard Teeny Weeny Spider.
But I do agree, Itsy Bitsy Spider is the traditional version, the one I learned in preschool.
She didn’t remake it, she murdered it.
I learned it as the Itsy Bitsy spider. On my last birthday, a friend sent me a card that featured a spider climbing up a birthday cake and burning his behind on the candles. He was referred to as the Itsy Bitsy spider.
Here’s a question regarding that ad: is the announcer that former Miss America with a speech impediment?
It was definitely “Incey Wincey Spider” when I started preschool 30+ years ago in Australia. Maybe it’s a cultural thing…
Yeah, folks. It’s the non-US version, as I always knew of it as ‘incy-wincy spider’. That’s his name, not a description.
Similarly, you guys dance the ‘hokey-pokey’ whereas I danced the ‘hokey-tokey’ and in the UK they dance the ‘hokey-cokey’.
Go figure.
hokey-tokey, huh
Brings to mind images of a bunch of stoners, and suddenly the song makes sense…
you put your right arm in…ponders right arm
you put your right arm out…feels the “rightness”
you put your right arm in… yeah, man
and you shake it all about whoa, dude
you do the hokey-tokey inhales deeply
and you turn yourself about (okay not sure about this line; i hear you don’t usually feel much like spinning around while stoned blinks innocently)
that’s what it’s all about. (definitely something you’d say while stoned)
of course this would all be done much more sedately than your usual hokey-pokey
Yeah, yeah. So I didn’t get all the words right.
“You turn yourself around.”
My SO just ordered the aforementioned CD for our little tyke. Once it is received, I will let you know if there are any other obvious international conspiracies that involve changing the names of beloved childhood songs. Hey, just 'cause they do it that way in another country, that don’t make it right.
ireland checking in. Definitely “Itsy Bitsy”
When I was tiny, I sang “itsy-bitsy”. I am doing my part to save our cultural heritage by teaching “itsy-bitsy” to my children.
::gives self an undeserved pat on the back::
Pierre must be rolling over in his grave right now. My poor, lost, itsy-bitsy spider.
Well, we finally got the CDs. Incy-Wincy Spider is probably the biggest sacrilege. There are other minor anomalies (not in the JDT sense :)), mainly in terms of a minor word change here or there.
My biggest surprise is how many “kids” songs are just downright grim. There’s one song that really made me question my hearing, plot follows:
- there was a sow who said “oink oink oink”
- she had three piglets who said “wee wee wee”
- piglets cop a 'tude decide to act all grownup by saying “oink oink oink” themselves.
- apparently sow now thinks that they are in fact grownup and stops feeding them.
- piglets die.
Now everybody sing…