

“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo” and the ambiguous history of counting-out rhymes - pepys
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/16/losing-count/

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baking
It's a garbled version of a latin exorcism: "Inimicus animo"

[http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/18/messages/777.htm...](http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/18/messages/777.html)

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tremendo
It's for counting!? I always had this idea it was like a pseudo-random way of
picking one option out of several, like in my part of México we (used-to) use
(not-really Spanish) "de tín marín de do-pingüé, cúcara mácara tîtiri füé, yo
no fuí, fué te-té, pégale, pégale que ese mero fué". Which reminds me of
another one I learnt from a book as a child but have never heard it from
anyone else out in the open: "pin-pin, zarambolín, el ratón comer comer, el
ratón comer comer, ¿cuánto das por el ratón? cien tostones y un doblón, arre
mula carretera pin-pin estás afuera!".

~~~
colanderman
It is used for "randomly" picking at option. I remember when I was young
realizing I could compute the remainder and "cheat" when using this.

Not sure why they call it a "counting-out" rhyme, though I guess I can't think
of a better thing to call it.

Side note, the way I learned it, the last line was always "out goes Y-O-U".
Much better than simply repeating the first line over :)

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anjbe
This is how I learned it growing up (southwestern US in the mid 1990s):

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo

Catch a tiger by the toe

If he hollers, make him pay

Fifty dollars every day

My mother told me to pick the very best one

and you are [not] it

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jashmenn
I love this idea that the essence of these poems are in the rhythm,
vocalizations, and play and not in the specific words themselves.

When I was small, my parents would tell me a toe-counting rhyme, which I knew
as "icky-pee, penny lou". I wanted to learn what the "real" words were and
found this page [1]. In the comments there are dozens of variations on this
same poem and none use the same phrasing we did.

Oral traditions seem to have a way of distilling information to essences over
time vs. bit-wise copies.

[1]: [http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-origins-of-some-
scandinavia...](http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-origins-of-some-scandinavian-
toe-naming-rhymes/)

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wickedlogic
I came across this a while back also when watching videos about the Lake
District/Valley of Stone area in England. The video and accent helps alot to
understand the method:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZTEvdf3KP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZTEvdf3KP4)

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cafard
We also used "Engine, engine number nine/Rolling down Chicago line" (etc.)
long ago. And about 20 years ago, I heard children using it who appeared to be
the US-born children of fairly recent immigrants.

~~~
Symbiote
The usual rhyme at the small village school in England I attended in 1993ish
was "Ip dip, dog shit, fucking bastard, dirty git, you are not it!"

But the better ones had a variable, and I could reliably make myself "out" if
I had the chance to select it. This was sometimes considered unfair.

"There's a party on the hill, can you come? Bring your own bread and butter
and a bun. Who is your best friend?" "David" "D-A-V-I-D" (final letter means
out!).

"Ippy-dippy-dation, my operation, how many buses in a London station?"
"Twelve." "1 2 3 4 ...12, O-U-T spells out!"

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JacobAldridge
I'd be curious as to the timing of the 'Tiger' iteration, and its spread.
Certainly growing up where I did (Northern NSW, Australia) in the late '80s,
we used the original wording.

No doubt some of that was a lack of cultural awareness - it was a fairly white
part of the world, especially in private education. I'm a mongrel breed, which
basically just means I always look like I have a nice tan but nothing more,
and even I got called a 'nigger' once playing football because I was the
darkest person that kid had ever seen.

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mg1982
Scotland (late 80s/early 90s): (adults present) Ibble ubble black bubble ibble
ubble out (no adults) It dit dog shit you are not it

Don't really hear it any more though - kids today with their "hash" tags and
their clever telephones are really missing out, I think.

~~~
JacobAldridge
We use to run (Northern NSW, Australia), as an eeny meeny variant, 'Ip dip dog
shit / You stood in it / What colour was it?' where 'it' would then name a
colour, which would then be spelled out in a counting round (R-E-D) - and then
'D' would be 'It'.

If you were called upon first and knew enough colours of differing lengths,
and I did, then you could ensure any specific person would become 'It' at the
end of the round.

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groks
A list of several dozen posted recently to twitter:

[https://storify.com/mooseallain/picking-
rhymes](https://storify.com/mooseallain/picking-rhymes)

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eplanit
A more thorough history of the subject rhyme:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe)

~~~
WildUtah
Used to be Paris Review articles were more than weak summaries of Wikipedia
pages...

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sethammons
ink-a-bink-a bottle of ink, the cork fell out and you stink

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo catch a tiger by the toe if he hollers, let him go eeny,
meeny, miny, mo

