"The worms they crept in"

[Patti J. Kurtz]

I remember something like this:

"The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the ants play pinochle on your
snout."


There's a lot more, too, very gross in a kid-gross kind of way!
Patti Kurtz

patty at CRUZIO.COM wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Patty Davies <patty at CRUZIO.COM>
>Subject:      Re: "The worms they crept in"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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.
>>
>>

--

Dr. Patti J. Kurtz

Assistant Professor, English

Director of the Writing Center

Minot State University

Minot, ND 58707



Foster: What about our evidence? They've got to take notice of that.



Straker: Evidence. What's it going to look like when Henderson claims
that we manufactured it, just to get a space clearance program?



Foster: But we are RIGHT!



Straker: Sometimes, Colonel, that's not quite enough.