My mother heard the other version of the “tiger” rhyme as a kid in upstate PA in the 30’s I think. Never thought about it till years later, but never said it, thankfully.
Me, too.
The tiger version goes way back, but not as far back as the “n-word” version. When I was a very little kid in the early 60’s, my mother firmly told us we were never, ever to use the n-word version, even though other kids used it. She said the n-word was worse than swearing. Other parents must have done the same, because even though some kids in our neighborhood (west of Chicago) still used the n-word version, there were enough of us in the neighborhood who vociferously refused that those kids eventually dripped it.
From The Paris Review (The article uses the full n-word, which would be a violation of board policy. I have replaced it with “[n_____”.]:
In the canonical Eeny Meeny, “tiger” is standard in the second line, but this is a relatively recent revision. If it doesn’t seem to make sense, even in the gibberish Eeny Meeny world, that you’d grab a carnivorous cat’s toe and expect the tiger to do the hollering, remember that in both England and America, children until recently said “Catch a [n_____] by the toe.” The [n____]-to-tiger shift is one of the rare instances where changes in the rhyme happen in such an explicit and pointed fashion.
I’m glad the n-word version is gone. I wish it had never become popular in the first place.
I learned the bad version which must have been the original since the one line wouldn’t make sense using Tiger. Eeeny Meany Minie Moe, catch a ____ by the toe, if he hollers make him pay $50 everyday. My mother told me to make the very best choice Y-O-U!
Another one was" Another day another dollar, that’s what you hear the ___ holler.
There were so many things I heard growing up (50s and 60s) that were ethnically demeaning, derogatory to religions, and racist But I’d have to say, there was little bias, just about everyone was insulted back then. So let me remember one that wasn’t:: “I bet you dimes to donuts” (fill in a something here) will happen. With inflation most people say ‘dollars’ now. I learned that from my mother, she had more sayings than ‘Carter had pills’.
Small town Minnesota. Used both versions in the 1960’s, with ‘tiger’ eventually winning out.
“Dollars to donuts” dates back to at least 1945, in Rogers and Hammerstein’s State Fair (and probably well before that; that’s just the example I knew off the top of my head). At the time, it was meant to represent a very lopsided bet, because of course a dollar was worth so much more than a donut. Nowadays, though, even the mass-produced donuts at a place like Dunkin’ are on a par with dollars.
I was small in the 50s in California. I never heard the “n” version, but I knew about it. No one I knew used it.