Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/142

134 AMERICAN SONG-GAMES AND WONDER-TALES.

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N her work on the Study of Folk-Songs, the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco tells us that she has been unable to get anything of that nature from the United States. Nevertheless our children have a few native ditties and jingles, if one may judge by internal evidence and the absence of all that would contradict it.

For example, there is the skipping-rope formula first mentioned in my article on "Carols and Child-Lore" (see Lippincott's Magazine for September 1886). Since then other versions have reached me from various parts of the country, all traceable to the Atlantic slope. In New England it seems to have been used for at least sixty years, but probably it is much older than that. The original formula—or what I take to be such—runs as follows:

Sometimes "levitical" becomes "leviticus." The injunction at the end may be widely varied; for example, thus:—

Or:

All the above are from Massachusetts directly or indirectly.