Friday, August 6, 2010

hand on my head, what have I here?

When I was small, my mother used to sing me a silly song that she must have grown up with. I never heard it in Ireland other than from her. These things surfaec when you have your own children.

It used to go

'Hand on my head, what have I here?
This is my head noggin, oh Mama dear
Head noggin, head noggin, nicky nicky nicky noo
That's what I learned at the school, Ma'

and then

'Hand on my eye, what have I here?
This is my eye peeper, Oh Mama Dear,
Head noggin, eye peeper, nicky nicky nicky noo,
That's what I learned at the school, Ma'

And it went on, with various funny words for body parts. I've been meaning to look up the words for years, and I just did, and fond this page, with SO many different versions. It's clearly of German origin (as was my mother, distantly, that and Scots, a dour pilgrim ancestry that I have written down somewhere) and from the posters' input it was obviously meant to be sung in immigrant English, like a first or second generation grandparent might sing to their English speaking grandchild. Sweet, really.

Here's the link. Not that there's any reason to be interested, but ... well, there it is.  Anyone know it?

1 comment:

Mwa said...

I'm not going to look it up because I fucking want to give birth already and it's making me quite self-centred, but I am very extremely interested in the concept of nursery rhymes made especially for and by immigrants. Fascinating concept!