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AMERICAN SONG-GAMES AND WONDER-TALES.
By W. H. Babcock.
N her work on the Study of Folk-Songs, the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco tells us that she has been unable to get anything of that nature from the United States. Nevertheless our children have a few native ditties and jingles, if one may judge by internal evidence and the absence of all that would contradict it.
For example, there is the skipping-rope formula first mentioned in my article on "Carols and Child-Lore" (see Lippincott's Magazine for September 1886). Since then other versions have reached me from various parts of the country, all traceable to the Atlantic slope. In New England it seems to have been used for at least sixty years, but probably it is much older than that. The original formula—or what I take to be such—runs as follows:
"By the old levitical law
I marry this Indian to this squaw.
You must be kind, you must be true,
And kiss the bride, and she'll kiss you."
Sometimes "levitical" becomes "leviticus." The injunction at the end may be widely varied; for example, thus:—
"You must be kind, you must be good,
And split up all her oven wood."
Or:
"Sober live, and sober proceed,
And so bring up your Indian breed."
All the above are from Massachusetts directly or indirectly.
