"The worms they crept in"

[Patty Davies]

Hello George - as soon as I read this line, I remembered this from my
elementary school years, in Ventura County (Santa Paula) in Southern
California.  This would have been around 1962-1963.  There were a couple
verses and there was a real sing-song way we used to recite it:

   The worms crept in, the worms crept out
    in your mouth and out your snout

There were more verses than this and I used to know them all :)   It
definitely had to do with dead bodies.

Patty Davies

At 03:22 PM 9/16/04, you wrote:
>The line quoted below is the first line of a poem I remember from my very
>youthful days, recited by me and my classmates with the thought that we
>were saying something very daring.  I don't recall my age, but it would
>have been in probably 3rd or 4th grade, probably not when we were more mature.
>
>Faction, lifting up his snaky head,* contemns, in that Commonwealth, it is
>apprehended, all reason, and defies all law.
>         *"The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out."
>         American Citizen, January 26, 1809, p. 2, col. 2  The footnote is
> as in the original.
>         The American Citizen was a NYC newspaper, virulently political.
>
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African
>Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.