Phoebe has already given us the lyrics to “I’m Gonna Go Eat Worms,” and that just naturally called to mind two other gross-out songs of childhood.
Jars and jars of green and gooshy gopher guts,/ concentrated monkey meat, percolated birdie feet,/ all wrapped up in green and purple porpoise-pus… All right, enough already, I don’t want to lose my job. So I won’t reproduce the lyrics of “Never Laugh When a Hearse Goes By.” You probably know them already, anyhow.
I have heard these songs from people who came from different states all over the country, with minor variations galore. Playground songs, I guess you’d call ’em. You could probably crank a genuine folklore thesis out of it. (“Teacher is a friend of mine, she resembles Frankenstein…”) Oy, the memories!
I’ll bet you could get a degree in this stuff.
I think some books have been written about the universality of children’s games, but I’ve never seen any convincing explanations of how they became so universal. Maybe some of them began in the Garden of Eden — although I’m not sure how Cain could have known about the future story about Frankenstein, or the English language, for that matter.
Yellow belly custard
Green snot pie
All mixed up with a dead dog’s eye
Slap it on a butty, nice and thick,
And swill it down with a cup of cold sick
This is about school dinners.
I never ate in the school cafeteria.
Lee, I think the one you mentioned ends with, “I forgot my spoon, used a fork.” Yeah, how did they become so universal?
I wonder how far back in time they go. Ina grew up in Scotland, hearing these. How long did it take for them to go from the Old World to the New?
I learned it as “and me without a spoon.” I’m sure there’s a multitude of variations.