Ha!" Eeena, meena, mina, mo. Bach's St. John Passion, for instance, is set to anti-semitic text. The meaning: The meaning of this rhyme is rooted in the slave trade. We publish narratives intentionally and specifically to enlighten and transform the world. Many farmers and fishermen on the fringes of Britain used such language for counting until quite recently and many natives of the north of England can still count from one to five in 'the old way' - 'yan, tan tehera, methera, pimp'. Instead of Monkeys, Five Little Monkeys (also known as Ten Little Monkeys originally used the n word or darkies as a reference to Black people. And if you have a vested interest in perpetuating the myths, youll want to start corrupting your children young right from the cradle and thats how these rhymes were surely born. In some Dutch versions Ene, mine, mike, maken.. Eenie, meenie, minie mo." The original lyrics: "It raind all night de day I left, De wedder it was dry, The sun so hot I froze to def.". And, this particular rhyme isnt only found in the US; kids in England, France, Denmark, Germany, and Zimbabwe all make decisions using similar-sounding rhymes. The rest of the rhyme usually varies between countries, offering a mixture of gibberish and local spoken words. A leader takes the counting role and, in the rhythm of the rhyme, points to each child in turn. I've updated the piece to reflect those concerns. ", "Catch a negro by his toe/ If he hollers make him pay/Twenty dollars every day. Eenie, meenie, minie mo." An alternate version: "Catch a negro by his toe/ If he hollers. You know them by heart, but you can do these little, like, switches and flips and variations in them. There isnt a clearcut explanation as to how these global variations came about and to provide one would require knowing definitively where Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moecomes from (which is, alas, impossible). Nevertheless, there are as many theories as to the origin of Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moeas there are variations. Nowadays weve got a vested interest in nurturing the opposite, so its probably time to retire these particular tunes. The song portrays a slave who shows emotion and perhaps longing in the wake of his master's death. The first line in the version sung in Cornwall, England was Eeha, meena, mona, mite. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Doo-dah!/ I come down dah wid my hat caved in Doo-dah! British? It was used in the chorus of Bert Fitzgibbon 's 1906 song "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo": Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, Catch a nigger by the toe, If he won't work then let him go; Skidum, skidee, skidoo. In 2004, two African-American sisters sued Southwest Airlines for discrimination on the basis of the nursery rhyme. Doo-dah!/ I go back home wid a pocket full of tin -- Oh! The age of the phrase is uncertain. Catch a racist by the toe. The title of Chester Himes's novel If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) refers to the rhyme. ", When it comes to these songs, Shaftel explains that children should be taught the modified versions because they can't grasp the nuances of race just yet and don't have multiple levels of understanding. Endendino, en-den-di-no. In the 1700s up to the early 1900s, variations of the Score were used in the UK and the US by fishermen needing to take stock of the days catch, shepherds and farmers accounting for their animals, and women keeping track of rows in knitting. Also, the word for 'one' in Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Breton is, respectively, 'un' (pronounced 'een'), 'ouyn', 'aon' and 'unan' - all of them sounding not unlike 'een' or 'eeny'. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. What kind of music are we preserving? Many people conveniently forget parts of American history like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Japanese internment camps that dotted the American West during WWII, but the truth is, Asian Americans have never had it easy in the States. Johnson's piece got us thinking about the songs like the ice cream truck song a seemingly innocuous folk song, nursery rhyme, or jingle that we may not have known were racist, and what we should do when we learn about their histories. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", which can be spelled a number of ways, is a children's counting rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag. In some German versions Eena, tena, mona, mi. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe " In historical references of this song, the word "tiger" is replaced by the N-word. Change them? Millions turn to Vox to educate themselves, their family, and their friends about whats happening in the world around them, and to learn about things that spark their curiosity. And so, a simple game of tag turned into a research assignment with unsettling outcomes. Wash your hands afterwards. "It's become clear to scholars that blackface/ minstrels were really the North's only exposure for what was going in the South," Shaftel says, explaining that while these shows were racist and terrible, they were trying to portray some semblance of reality of what life was like in the South. The second line in the American rhyme, Catch a tiger by the toe, has a clearer and more dismal ancestry that traces right back to the United States. There never was an accepted definitive version, so the children who used the rhyme were very happy to substitute their own words as the mood took them. A version from Yorkshire is: Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo. Google Pay. What is known is that countless variations of the nursery rhyme exist. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. Eje, veje, vaek. $MMT = window.$MMT || {}; $MMT.cmd = $MMT.cmd || [];$MMT.cmd.push(function(){ $MMT.display.slots.push(["6e36601e-44cf-4f78-b804-bfbdde6ee2e3"]); }). Players: 3 Girls Age: 9-11. Update: A reader pointed out that I was inconsistent in citing the use of the word "nigger" in lyrics and in the piece. The use of the word nigger was censored for the American market, being replaced by sailor. Lets take a look at some of them. [31] The uncensored word was restored for the Criterion Collection edition of the film. Ancient Celtic counting system or Victorian nonsense verse? Raphel wrote about eeny meeny miny mo for The Paris Review. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe is a rhyme for choosing who's "It" in a game or to choose who goes first. Why do so many fairy tales contain a hero named Jack? This offensive variation was widely used until around the 1950s when kid-friendly variations that instead use words like tiger, tinker, and piggy became commonplace. Its well known that theres some challenging language in the Gospel of John,". It wasnt until a discussion about the rhyme with my American wife that I discovered any tiger version existed, adds another. You can replace catch a tiger with any word (catch a boy, catch girl, etc) or any animal, or when singing to baby you can say catch a baby. And there's versions in France(reciting poem with French dialect). Support me by joining Medium via this link: https://eladsi.medium.com/membership. Stop singing them? The jury did not side with the plaintiffs, and though they appealed, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the initial ruling. These songs, many of which are still sung today, aren't just uncomfortable because of their lyrics; most were used in minstrel/blackface performances in the past. And his story raised awareness among his readers. Osse bosse bakke disse, For Theodore Johnson III, who wrote the article, knowledge of that history ruined ice cream trucks for him. The song is made up from a number of syllables, (the counting out rhyme). Is it my responsibility to foul the sweet taste of ice cream with their first taste of racism?". Notably, the rhyme has been used by killers to choose victims in the 1994 films Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers,[24][25] the 2003 film Elephant,[26] and the sixth-season finale of the television series The Walking Dead. Shorty is a eenie meenie miney mo lover "Eenie Meenie" is a song by American singer Sean Kingston and Canadian singer Justin Bieber. Every kid seems to know a version of Eeny Meeny Miny Mo. Whenever I hear the music now, the antique voice laughing about niggers and watermelon fills my head," Johnson wrote. The first record of a similar rhyme, called the "Hana, man," is from about 1815, when children in New York City are said to have repeated the rhyme: Henry Carrington Bolton discovered this version to be in the US, Ireland and Scotland in the 1880s but was unknown in England until later in the century. Catch a racist by the toe. The lyrics of the song include one about the ole massa gone away, and have been terrorizing Black children for centuries. Its not hard to see why children would use a playful variation of (essentially) one, two, three to count down their options. ADRIENNE RAPHEL: Yan, tan, tehtera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera - so you can kind of hear the eeny meeny miny mo in it, right? In the 1800s, the nursery rhyme could be found in both the US and Europe (via An Injustice). It was written at a time when slaves were regularly dehumanized and not presented as having internal lives or worth, but the slave portrayed in "Jimmy " is someone who has feelings (whether it be lament or rejoicing), someone who is human, someone "who isn't just property," Shaftel explained. Eggs, butter, cheese, bread, ine mina mana mu meaning my sisters children in Sa Tomenese sounds very similar to the first line in the childrens rhyme. Catch a tiger by the toe, In the US, Bolton found no less than 8 different versions using the word n***** in the second line. The Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo series is now on display at the Children's Defense Fund's national headquarters and is a searing daily reminder of how many children are not free but caged in America. Put the baby on the po. It's safe to say that as classic as "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" is, the centuries-old nursery rhyme no doubt has a haunted past and not so kid-friendly origins. Pastor, lone, bone, strei, You start saying eeny meeny, and then you go miny mo. The FBI and Energy Department think Covid-19 came from a lab. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Joe Biden is pretty good at being president. Whenever I hear the music now, the antique voice laughing about niggers and watermelon fills my head," Johnson wrote. The first line of a popular children's counting rhyme. [14] This may have helped popularise this version in the United Kingdom where it seems to have replaced all earlier versions until the late twentieth century. For the most part, schools in the U.S. have gone with the latter. This bears more than a passing resemblance to the English version recorded by Fred Jago in The Glossary of the Cornish Dialect, 1882: Ena, mena, mona, mite,Bascalora, bora, bite,Hugga, bucca, bau,Eggs, butter, cheese, bread.Stick, stock, stone dead - OUT.". [28], Rex Stout wrote a 1962 Nero Wolfe novella titled Eeny Meeny Murder Mo. Good Luck! Contribute to Atlanta Black Star today and help us share our narratives. Eeny meeny miney mo, Catch a tiger by the toe, If he swears, let it go, Eeny meeny miney mo. I could remeber working for Califonia Department of Forestry in 1985 at Ryan Air field Hemet Ca. In order to justify slavery, slavers propagated the libel that people of African descent were inherently more animal, less civilized, and thus less human.. Each syllable counts a child from a circle, and the game round finishes with the last kid pointed out. "Do I empower them with the history of our country, or encourage the youthful exuberance induced by the ice cream truck? Bolton says that it is impossible to trace the exact origin of the rhyme. An example comes from the Danish region near Kattegat, where the Jack and Jill rhyme, which arrived during the British occupation in the Napoleonic wars, was repeated as: Jeck og JillVent op de hillOg Jell kom tombling efter. Nonetheless, it's clear that "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" was adapted through the years and revised to fit the era and place it was sung in. And who decides this? And no, subbing in monkeys and making the rhymes less deadly isnt innocent, says Kansas State University English professor Philip Nel. Copyright 2015 NPR. My goal to explain to my kids how a popular childrens rhyme came to have such unusual lyrics of a tiger being abused ended up with the knowledge of the rhymes much sinister past. If they squeal make them squeal some more. Catch an nigger by the toe. Warning: We are talking about racism in this article. She wrote about eeny meeny miny mo for The Paris Review. "[4] "Tigger" is also used instead of "tiger" in some versions of the rhyme.[5][6]. There is a similarity between the words of the phrase and some of the numerals in pre-English Celtic and Cumbrian languages; for example, the oral tradition of the English coastal town of Yarmouth voices 'one, two, three, four' as 'ina, mina, tethera, methera'. Gotta jump down, turn around, Oh, Lordie, pick a bale a day." Germany: Was? The meaning: The song is about a slave and the death of his master. Again, this is in no way a defense of those songs, a defense for keeping their original lyrics or absolving the audience members from their consumption of racist material. Sign up to receive The Atlanta Black Star Newsletter in your inbox. The meaning: The protagonist of the song is an African-American slave who is portrayed as dumb and naive. Each week, we explore unique solutions to some of the world's biggest problems. You . I contacted Matthew Shaftel, a professor of Music Theory and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Florida State for an expert opinion. In my search, I stumbled upon the book The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children: A Study of Folk-Lore by Henry Carrington Bolton. The classic American version most are familiar with goes like this: "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a tiger by the toe, If he hollers, let him go, eeny, meeny, miny, mo." Counting off has always been a way to group and identify things. But it's really hard to - and the history of it is much more complicated than that because the sounds in this rhyme are really sticky. What lies behind this variability is that throughout the 19th century the rhyme spread from different parts of the UK to every playground in the English-speaking world, but by word of mouth rather than on paper. The, "Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. What does eenie meanie, miny, moe expression mean? Eeny meeny miney mo, Catch a tigger by the toe, If you ever let it go, Eeny meeny miney mo. Dutch? 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