Texas and Southwestern Lore Page: 69
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Tales and Rhymes of a Texas Household
One-ery, two-ery,
Ziccary zan;
Hollowbone, crack a bone,
Ninery, ten, etc.
Newell, in Songs and Games of American Children, p. 198,
gives a variant from Georgia.
(5) The next rhyme is a variant of "See, saw, Margery
Daw," given in Halliwell, No. 573, p. 108.
See, saw, saddle the old goose,
The old hen jumped over the punkin house,
And called her chickens one by one,
And left the poor little black-headed one.
(6) The nomony "Robbin [Robin] to Bobbin" has an inter-
esting origin. The following account is quoted in the JAFL,
Vol. 6 (1893), pp. 143-144, from "Christmastide in the Isle of
Man," Monthly Packet, 1868, p. 301: "The day before St.
Stephen's Day an unfortunate wren is caught and stoned to
death; he is then hung on a bush. The following day three
boys, one with a piece of crepe on his cap, and another orna-
mented with flowers and some wren's feathers, go about
from house to house, carrying the bush and singing,
'We'll away to the woods,' says Robin the Bobbin."
The note in the JAFL states that the wren was hunted and
beaten to death on St. Stephen's Day because the wren is a
fairy who, according to ancient tradition, in guise of a beau-
tiful woman once bewitched a host of the best men of the
island and then led them all over a cliff to their death in the
sea. But Chambers (Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870 ed., p 38)
gives a different explanation: "It is believed to have taken
its origin in an effort of the early Christian missionaries to
extinguish a reverence for the wren, which had been held
by the Druids as the king of birds."
As the custom died out in England and the origin of the
song was forgotten, other birds were substituted for the
wren: in Derbyshire (Notes and Queries, 9th Ser., Vol. 12, p.
503), a crow; in Staffordshire (Notes and Queries, 10th Ser., Vol.
1, p. 218), a cock sparrow; and in the West Riding of York-
shire (Notes and Queries, 10th Ser., Vol. 1, p. 172), a green lin-
net, which was killed to get sixpence to buy some "terbacker."69
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Texas and Southwestern Lore (Book)
Collection of popular folklore from Texas and the Southwest, including ballads, cowboy songs, Native American myths, superstitions and other miscellaneous folk tales. It also contains the proceedings of the Texas Folklore Society. The index begins on page 243.
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Dobie, J. Frank (James Frank), 1888-1964. Texas and Southwestern Lore, book, 1927; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67662/m1/71/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.