Hide-and-seek ([was "Damn! Forgot to supply subject!])

[Wilson Gray]

On Jul 31, 2004, at 12:19 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
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> FWIW, I "collected" a version of the "24 robbers" rhyme from a fellow
> grad student in
> 1974. He was from the piedmont of North Carolina.  I will have to dig
> the rest of the (maybe six line) rhyme out from its hiding place, but
> it started this way:
>
> 'Tweren't last night, 'twas the night before;
> Four-and-twenty robbers came knockin' at the door.

This is really interesting!

>
> I'm quite sure it had nothing to do with what I grew up calling
> "hide-and-seek."

And if it has nothing to do with hide-and-seek, that's even more
interesting.

-Wilson Gray

>
> JL
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
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>>
>> Wilson,
>>
>> When the game was over did you call ally ally outs in free like we did
>> in
>> southern Illinois?
>>
>> Page Stephens
>
> Strange as it may seem, this is not a part of
> hide-and-seek/hide-and-go-seek [I myself say "hide-and-seek," but I've
> heard "hide-and-go-seek" from so many different people from so many
> different places and read it in so many different kinds of publications
> that I can't consider the "go" version to be "wrong," though, of
> course, I'd like to;-)] as I know it. The game simply continued till
> the last person out was tagged or got home free. Some time in the
> distant past - in the '60's, perhaps? - I read an article about the
> derivation of "olly olly ox in free" from "all the, all the outs in
> free." That was the first that I had ever heard of it.
>
> Now, I'm going to return your serve. Did "it" chant a sing-song rhyme
> or merely count up to a certain number? The only place that I've lived
> where the chant is used is in East Texas. However, I have irrefutable
> evidence that it is used elsewhere in the South, almost certainly in
> Memphis, TN, though I can't verify this.
>
> The chant is:
>
> Last night, night before
> Twenty-four robbers at my door
> I opened the door
> I let them in
> I hit them in the head with a rolling pin
> All hid?
>
> The evidence is:
>
> In 1961, a band calling itself The Mar-Keys, like the Bar-Kays a
> spin-off from the much-better-known band, Booker T and the M.G.'s, was
> formed in Memphis, TN. Their first and only hit was an instrumental
> entitled "Last Night." If you turned this record over, like, to the
> flip side, there you found another instrumental, entitled, "Night
> Before"! Coincidence? I think not.
>
> -Wilson Gray
>
>
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