It was customary when a crow or rook was seen to shout:
“Crow, crow, get out of my sight,
Or else I’ll have your liver and light,”
and it was always thought that however far off the bird might be it would immediately obey.
The following rhyme is used by children who have occasion to make a division of anything whilst they hide the article behind them and say:
“Handy-pandy,
Jack-a-dandy,
Which hand will you have?”
It is also used as a formula inviting a small wager, when a child hides a marble or other trifle in one hand, and holds out both fists, then if the other guesses right he wins the marble, or if wrong he pays one.[1]
The following rhyme was often heard among school children, sung to a particular tune:
“Went out in garden.
Picked up a pin,
And asked if any one was in.
No one in, and no one out,
Out in the garden walking about.”
The same, with the following :
“Turn about, and wheel about,
And do just so,
And every time we turn about,
And jump Jim Crow.”
Few children would at first recognise in the following queer couplet that the sweet woodruff (Asperula odorata), called by the rustics “woody-ruffy,” was intended:
“Double u, double o, double d, e,
R, o, double u, double f, e.” (Woodderowffe.)
- ↑ This infantine form of gambling, says Miss Burne (Shropshire Folklore, p. 530), is alluded to as “handy-dandy” in Piers Plowman, and also in King Lear.
