{"id":84851,"date":"2015-04-16T12:16:40","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T16:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=84851"},"modified":"2015-04-16T12:16:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T16:16:40","slug":"losing-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/16\/losing-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Losing Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEeny, meeny, miny, mo\u201d and the ambiguous history of counting-out rhymes.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Cedar-Central\"<\/a>

A Works Progress Administration poster for the Cedar Central Apartments in Cleveland, Ohio, ca. 1936.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeny meeny miny mo
<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cEeny meeny miny mo\u201d is one of those rhymes that\u2019s ingrained in our cultural limbic system\u2014once we hear the first two syllables, the rest unspools whether we want it to or not. No one knows what eeny<\/em> or meeny<\/em> might mean; everybody knows what \u201ceeny meeny\u201d means. It turns up in strange places: in Pulp Fiction<\/em>, in the Great Vermont Corn Maze, in Justin Bieber songs. But where did eeny meeny come from? Kipling tells us that \u201cEenee, Meenee, Mainee, and Mo \/ Were the First Big Four of the Long Ago,\u201d but that\u2019s not such a good lead.<\/p>\n

What we do know is that once Eeny Meeny appeared on the scene, it was everywhere. In the fifties and sixties, the formidable husband-and-wife folklorists Iona and Peter Opie<\/a> recorded hundreds of varieties in England and America, including, to name just a few: <\/p>\n

\n

Hana, mana, mona, mike,\u00a0
Barcelona, bona, strike, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Hare, ware, frown, venac\u00a0
Harrico, warrico, we, wo, wac\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eena, meena, mina, mo,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Cracka, feena, fina, fo,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Uppa, nootcha, poppa, tootcha,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Ring, ding, dang, doe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eeny, meeny, mony, my,\u00a0\u00a0
Barcelona, stony, sty,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Eggs, butter, cheese, bread,
Stick, stack, stone dead\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jeema, jeema, jima, jo,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Jickamy, jackamy, jory,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Hika, sika, pika, wo,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Jeema, jeema, jima, jo<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not only are there hoards of Eeny Meenies, there are just as many counting-out schemes that share the same DNA. \u201cHinty, minty, cuty, corn, wire, briar, limber lock\u201d (United States). \u201cEenty, teenty, ithery, bithery\u201d (England). \u201cIppetty, sipetty, ippetty sap, ipetty, sipetty, kinella kinack\u201d (Scotland). And I\u2019d be remiss in omitting \u201cOne potato, two potato, three potato, four \/ Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more,\u201d which flirts with replacing eeny meeny as the counting-out gold standard in the United States.<\/p>\n

In the canonical Eeny Meeny, \u201ctiger\u201d is standard in the second line, but this is a relatively recent revision. If it doesn\u2019t seem to make sense, even in the gibberish Eeny Meeny world, that you\u2019d grab a carnivorous cat\u2019s toe and expect the tiger <\/em>to do the hollering, remember that in both England and America, children until recently said \u201cCatch a nigger by the toe.\u201d The nigger-to-tiger shift is one of the rare instances where changes in the rhyme happen in such an explicit and pointed fashion. The rhyme morphs constantly, but usually ad hoc, and each kickball court has its own particular flavor based more on random chance; one child\u2019s popular improvisation might catch on and change the rhyme in a certain region for decades.<\/p>\n

Many variations of Eeny Meeny have cropped up through mishearing, the way a game of Telephone or Chinese Whispers retains the sound of the original but mangles the sense. Some are mondegreens, a term coined by the author Sylvia Wright when she heard \u201cAnd laid him on the green\u201d as \u201cAnd Lady Mondegreen.\u201d (\u201c \u2019Scuse me while I kiss this guy\u201d is a mondegreen for Jimi Hendrix\u2019s lyric \u201c \u2019Scuse me while I kiss the sky\u201d, and Taylor Swift\u2019s long list of ex-lovers are lonely Starbucks lovers.)<\/p>\n

Other Eeny Meeny varietals arose through the process of Hobson-Jobson, that is, when words from another language are homophonically translated to fit the phonology of the native speaker\u2019s tongue. (\u201cHobson-Jobson\u201d is an Anglo-Indian corruption of the Muslim festival cry \u201cY\u0101 \u1e24asan! Y\u0101 \u1e24osain!\u201d; \u201cpunch,\u201d originally meaning a drink with five ingredients, is a Hobson-Jobson of panj, <\/em>meaning \u201cfive.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, le Eeny meeny<\/em> in France:<\/p>\n

\n

Une, mine, mane, mo,
Une, fine, fane, fo,
Maticaire et matico,
Mets la main derri\u00e8re ton dos.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And Denmark:<\/p>\n

\n

Ene, mene, ming, mang,
Kling klang,
Osse bosse bakke disse,
Eje, veje, vaek.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And Zimbabwe:<\/p>\n

\n

Eena, meena, ming, mong,
Ting, tay, tong,
Ooza, vooza, voka, tooza,
Vis, vos, vay.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But at their core, counting-out rhymes tend to be very conservative. In 1830, children in Scotland chanted:<\/p>\n

\n

Zinti, tinti,
Tethera, methera,
Bumfa, litera,
Hover, dover,
Dicket, dicket,
As I sat on my sooty kin
I saw the king of Irel pirel
Playing upon Jerusalem pipes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the 1950s:<\/p>\n

\n

Zeenty teenty
Heathery bethery
Bumful oorie
Over dover
Saw the King of easel diesel
Jumping over Jerusalem wall<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIrel pirel\u201d to \u201ceasel diesel\u201d is easy to figure out: When you say a set of phrases over and over, the ends and beginnings blend into each other, as when \u201cWork it work it work it work it\u201d becomes \u201ctwerk.\u201d So Scottish kids in the fifties, used to hearing \u201cdiesel\u201d elsewhere, heard it for \u201cpirel\u201d here.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The shared genetics of all these counting-out ditties strongly imply an \u00fcr-Eeny Meeny. And several folklorists have proposed various etymologies based on the content of some versions of Eeny Meeny, trying to derive significance from some variation of the gibberish. These prehistories range from charmingly whimsical to patently bogus.<\/p>\n

In the nineteenth century, for instance, the historian John Bellender Ker strung together several arbitrary strings of Dutch words that sounded like English counting-out rhymes, claiming these ditties originated as corruptions of stupid Dutch. And yet, as his contemporary Henry Carrington Bolton pointed out, Ker\u2019s argument is akin to deriving the word Middletown<\/em> from Moses<\/em>: \u201cBy dropping \u2018oses\u2019 we have the root \u2018M,\u2019 and on adding \u2018iddletown\u2019 we have \u2018Middletown.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

In 1982, similarly, Derek Bickerton postulated that the rhyme derives from Sa\u00f5 Tomenese, a Creole language spoken by African slaves. The Sa\u00f5 Tomenese phrase ine mina mana mu<\/em>, meaning \u201cmy sister\u2019s children,\u201d bears a very close phonological resemblance to \u201cEeny, meeny, miny, mo.\u201d The original \u201cCatch a nigger by the toe,\u201d according to Bickerton, points to the rhyme\u2019s roots in an African American community.<\/p>\n

But there may be an answer when we search for sound instead of sense. Eeny Meeny traces its ancestry to an ancient British counting system: the Anglo-Cymric Score. Across northern England and southern Scotland, a set of numerals exists for specific, ritual purposes: shepherds use it to count sheep, women to keep track of knitting, fishermen to harvest their catch. Peasants knew the system for centuries as \u201cYan tan tethera.\u201d Rhythmically, the score divides into fives (think number of fingers per hand), with a pronounced lilt and an emphasis on rhyming pairs. Words vary from region to region, but the score goes something like this:<\/p>\n

\n

Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp,
Sethera, lethera, hothera, dovera, dick,
Yan-dick, tan-dick, tether-dick, mether-dick, bumfit,
Yan-a-bumfit, tan-a-bumfit, tethera bumfit, pethera bumfit, gigert.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Similar counting scores exist in Ireland (Eina, mina, pera, peppera, pinn) and in the United States (Een, teen, tether, fether, fip). Knapp and Knapp paint a picture of English settlers teaching a version of the shepherds\u2019 score to Plymouth Indians, thus explaining why American children refer to this type of rhyme as \u201cIndian counting.\u201d More likely, however, is that children heard a rhyme of unknown origin and ascribed it to a foreign culture. \u201cChinese counting\u201d bears no relationship to actual Chinese counting. Like Eeny Meeny rhymes, the numerals are primarily for counting, not arithmetic: just as you wouldn\u2019t think to subtract miny from mo to get eeny, one doesn\u2019t necessarily add tethera to tan to get pimp. In these scores, the rhythm and ritual of the whole are more significant than the meaning of each individual component.<\/p>\n

Hickory, dickory, dock. Georgie, Porgie, Pudding \u2019n Pie. The shepherds\u2019 score is pervasive. And once we start listening, we can hear \u201cyan, tan, tethera\u201d on beyond counting-out rhymes. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, Blixem. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo. Itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini.<\/p>\n

Yet even the solution of the ancient Anglo-Cymric Score, as it turns out, is a chicken-and-egg: which came first, the counting-out system or the counting-out rhyme? The shepherds of that shepherds\u2019 score might be entirely apocryphal. The anthropologist Michael Barry, who conducted an exhaustive study of these shepherds\u2019 scores, failed to find a single instance of anyone who could recall an actual shepherd using the score to count his sheep. Just as Indians didn\u2019t use \u201cIndian counting,\u201d it\u2019s entirely possible that shepherds might never have used the shepherds\u2019 score. Indeed, the earliest recorded uses of the counting-out system are in counting-out rhymes\u2014so the origins of \u201cEeny, meeny, miny, mo\u201d might, it turns out, be nothing more and nothing less than Eeny, meeny, miny, and mo themselves.<\/p>\n

Adrienne Raphel is a graduate of the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop and is currently a Ph.D. student at Harvard, where she writes about poetics and plays word games. She contributes regularly to <\/em>The New Yorker online, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in <\/em>Lana Turner, the <\/em>Boston Review, and <\/em>Prelude, among other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEeny, meeny, miny, mo\u201d and the ambiguous history of counting-out rhymes. Eeny, meeny, miny, moCatch a tiger by the toeIf he hollers, let him goEeny meeny miny mo \u201cEeny meeny miny mo\u201d is one of those rhymes that\u2019s ingrained in our cultural limbic system\u2014once we hear the first two syllables, the rest unspools whether we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[684],"tags":[189,17786,17780,17781,2861,17782,17784,687,7586,17783,17787,17785,2393],"class_list":["post-84851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-language","tag-children","tag-counting","tag-counting-out-rhymes","tag-eeny-meeny-miny-mo","tag-history","tag-hobson-jobson","tag-iona-opie","tag-language","tag-nonsense","tag-peter-opie","tag-rhymes","tag-shepherds","tag-words"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Secret History of \u201cEeny Meeny Miny Mo\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How do nonsensical counting-out rhymes like these enter the lexicon?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/16\/losing-count\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Losing Count by Adrienne Raphel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 16, 2015 \u2013 \u201cEeny, meeny, miny, mo\u201d and the ambiguous history of counting-out rhymes. 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