One potato, two potato, three potato, four

[venta]

This is a question for anyone who has small children, hangs out with small children, or, I suppose, is a small child.

I suppose this question hangs on the idea that today's kids still play the sort of games which require them to choose who's "it", rather than just sitting around with PlayStations waiting for the relevant controller to light up.

At my school in the very early 80s, the standard method went:

Eeny meeny miny mo,
Catch a nigger by the toe,
If he squeals let him go,
Eeny meeny miny mo.

Interestingly ChrisC, who is around the same age as I am, reports that at his school they caught Tiggers by their toes. What did you catch ?

At the point at which I learned the rhyme, I had no idea what anyone meant by the word "nigger". In fact, for reasons best known only to a four year-old pysche, I promptly associated the rhyme with One, Two, Three, Four, Five and assumed that a nigger must be a kind of fish. No, I know fish don't have toes; if you're used to kids' rhymes and can happily cope with monkeys sleeping in bunks, dead men getting up to fight and the whole of existence being made of buttercream[*], fish with toes is a pretty small issue.

However, ideas about fish notwithstanding, I'm rather hoping that today children don't catch niggers. Do they catch something different ? Do they use a different rhyme altogether ?

Mind you, I'm fairly sure that we would have been prevented from using one our other standard rhymes for choosing, the rather graceless:

Ip, dip, dog shit
You trod in it

had anyone heard us. I guess we must have been careful not to say it in earshot of any staff; "shit", unlike "nigger", was a word you could get told off for.

Yes, I'm aware of The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. But that's talking about an era that was already very outdated when I read it twenty years ago. I want to know what's happening now.

Of course, it's always possible that today's kids are smart enough to have realised that this method of choosing "it" is completely deterministic, and thus highly open to fixing. Plus, of course, tacking on the extra You are in and you are out or It was not you, it was you was always an option if the chanter didn't like the outcome.

So, put your spuds in...

Ibble, obble, black bobble,
Ibble, obble, out

[*] Admittedly, that one turned turned out to be a misunderstanding. Life is but a dream, apparently.

Update For those who don't want to trawl through comments, the menagerie of things which can be caught by their toes currently stands at: tigers, Tiggers, tinkers, nickers, rabbits, fish, spiders and pigs.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

We (or other kids who actually played) did "catch a rabbit by its toe". Other people did not apparently learn this and accused me of racism when years later I went "Eeny meeny miney mo, catch a rabbit by its toe" to choose what meal to have in a restaurant.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

We did "Ibble obble" and "Ip dip dip, my blue ship". We also had one about a monkey running across the country and having an unfortunate anus-related accident.

Even though we probably didn't know the word 'nigger', I think we probably still had a sense that 'eeny meeny' was somehow beyond the pale. I know some people gentrified it to 'tiger' though.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Eeny meeny miny mo,
Put the baby on the po

[(Anonymous)]

growing up in the mid 70s USA (Indiana), "Eeny meeny miny mo" was the main one, but "tiger" instead of "nigger" (despite the overtly racist nature of a large fraction of my home town's population). Indeed I never heard of the "nigger" version until moving to the UK in 2000 - it was first brought to my attention when someone was horrifically offended that I casually said "eeny meeny" to indicate that I didn't have a preference between two options.

My American nieces and nephews (ages 5-10) mainly use the same "eeny meeny" routine I used as a child. At least in front of adults. When it comes to rigging the outcome, they still use the same timeless methods (knowing the outcome and selecting the starting point accordingly, or more commonly, adding words at the end until it comes out right).

I did overhear one jewel of a choosing game on my last visit, which adds an element of variability (though not immune to the extra word trick). Something like this:

Turds, turds, in a pot
How many turds have you got?
[person gives a number]
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 and you are IT.

Obviously a cheater can delete the "and" or make other changes to rig the outcome.

-dv

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I assumed 'nigger' was actually 'nicker', i.e. one who nicks stuff, a thief. I do remember thinking about it carefully, and also repeating the rhyme to my mum who was shocked, and told me why nigger was a bad word and why I wasn't to use it.

There was also a longer one:

Eeny meeny makaraka
Rare rye dominaka
Chipolata, lollipoppa
Om, pom, pear, puss
And you are not IT!

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

We used:

Eeny meeny miney mo
Catch a nicker by his toe
If he hollers let him go
Eeny meeny miney mo
Out you must go.

And we also had never heard of niggers. Or, indeed, hollering. Because of the hollering, I'd always assumed this rhyme came from America, so I'm surprised to hear the anonymous Indianan didn't use that version.

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

We caught pigs by their toes, obbled black bobbles and dip dip dipped a blue ship.

I'll check my copy of This when I find it again.

And this -> http://www.playgroundlaw.com/cgi-bin/browse.pl?sid=2012

Ip dip

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

We mostly used 'Ip dip', but a different version from you:

Ip dip sky blue,
who's It? Not you.
O U T spells out,
and out you must go.

(I think those last two lines were also how we ended 'One potato', but I can't remember.)

But our 'Eeny meeny' caught a tinker by his toe. It wasn't until much later that I even knew there were other versions.

We sometimes used to use those flexing folded paper things (you know what I mean, there's probably a word for them) to work out who was It, but iirc it took ages.

Alternatively, the sweaty red-faced kid who looked permanently on the verge of frustrated tears was It.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

We did Eeny miney but with tiger instead of nigger. I later learnt the nigger version but with the advisory is was rude but still no idea what a nigger was.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I parsed it as catchanigger for a while, then catch-an-igger. It didn't matter that it was nonsense, for the same reason you give.

smallclanger actually just told me that the version he knows is "eeny meeny miny mo, catch a fish by its toe". But the one they actually use is "ip dip do, Daddy had a poo, Mummy didn't like it, out goes you". We knew the ip dip version you mention, although the second line was who trod in it.

Lore & Language of Schoolchildren being out of date? That makes me feel very old because most of the Oxfordshire/Bucks/Berks stuff in it was still absolutely current when I started school in 1977!

[lnr]

One I remember is:

ip dip doo
the cat's got flu
the dog's got chickenpox
so out goes you

Others we used included ip dip dip and one-potato two-potato, I can't recall what version of eeny meeny we used to use though.

I've no idea what small children do these days I'm afraid

[keris.livejournal.com]

We caught spiders by their toes...

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Eeny meeny miny mo
Catch a tigger by the toe
If he squeals, let him go
You are not going to be it

And eetle ottle black bottle, eetle ottle out, and Mickey Mouse had a house, what colour was it?
(I think these days he's in his house, pulling down his trousers, which he wasn't when I knew it).

Can't think what else.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Like ChrisC, we all caught Tiggers back in the day (strictly the E.H. Shepard originals mind - none of your Disney nonsense).

Hippo doesn't often play tig, but when he does no choosing method is required since he'll take anyone's word for it concerning who should chase and be chased.

Bea and her crew have choosing rhymes too numerous to enumerate (and often loaded with pop culture references). "Ip Dip Dog Shit" still exists, but in mutated form where it ends "You Are Not It!" and is then repeated until only one person remains. They also still catch Tiggers/Tigers. Interestingly, "One potato, two potato..." is apparently used as a choosing rhyme. Whilst I often chanted this rhyme I'm pretty sure it was never used that way when I was little.

[triskellian]

We had an even ruder version of 'Ip, dip, dog shit':

Ip, dip, dog shit
Fucking bastard
Dirty git
[Duh, duh, duh, duh] you

Although, obviously, I can't remember the last line. I'm pretty sure we didn't know what 'fucking', 'bastard' or 'git' meant.

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Tiggers were caught by toes, Ible Oble Black Bobble, Ibble Obble Out, nonsesnse chant a la the alchemist rang lots of bells with me.

As I recollect though, I almost always spent break times reading on my own rather than playing in any games that required the identifying of one out of many as 'it'.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

That reminds me. Peter Jackson is remaking The Dam Busters and there's a big old hoo-haa about what they'll call the dog.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

I recall it as "catch a nipper by the toe". "My day" was some while before you and Chris; it's quite probable I recall it that way because I naively mis-heard it.

Wikipedia has some nonsense about it, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe

[failmaster.livejournal.com]

Ip dip dip
My blue ship
Sails on the water
Like a cup and saucer
O-U-T spells out!

We also had a more complicated one, where everyone started with their right feet in a circle:

Dot. If your shoe is dirty
Please change it at once.

If the finger was pointing at your shoe at the end you swapped for the left. You weren't out of the running until this had happened a second time.

We used 'spider' after 'nigger' was reclassified as a Rude Word.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Bit late but .. "when I started school" (to quote a previous post) in 1945, nigger wasn't politically incorrect and nigger brown was still an advertised colour.
But.. Eena meena mackaracka/Air oh dominaca/Alapaca, juvenacka/Om tom tush was a counting out rhyme when I moved to a North-East school in 1951, as was Dip dip, my little ship/Sailing on the water/Like a cup and saucer/You are not it (which meant repeating it until only one person was left).