Here's the excerpt that I mentioned in my earlier post. I'm re-posting it for the folkloric record. I consider the entire article to be quite interesting. The examples may be singing games and not actual play-party songs. I admit that I don't always know the difference between those two categories, and instead consider play-party songs as a sub-category of singing games...


This excerpt is from http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-kansas-play-party-songs/12756
Kansas Historical Quarterly - Kansas Play-Party Songs

by Myra E. Hull

November 1938 (Vol. 7, No. 4), pages 258 to 286
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.


..."Since children's singing games are so closely related to certain types of party games, a few of these heard in Kansas during the past fifty years will be considered here. Many of these I learned from my mother; others were sung by the children of Diamond School District No. 78, whose old stone schoolhouse has been a landmark in southern Butler county since 1878.

One of the first games I ever played was taught me by a group of Quaker children whose parents had come to Kansas from North Carolina in 1872, and established the Friends church near what is now Rose Hill. In playing this game, we sat down in a circle, and one child began by carrying on the following conversation with her nearest neighbor:


Toady, toady, how is thee?
I'm as well as I can be.
How's the neighbor next to thee?
Thee stay here and I'll go see.

263 HULL: KANSAS PLAY-PARTY SONGS

And so the game continued indefinitely. It was, as I remember it, enjoyment in the lowest key.

However, the version recorded by W. W. Newell, as played by New York and Philadelphia children about 1883, is much livelier:

"The question [`Quaker, Quaker, how is thee?'] is accompanied by a rapid movement of the right hand. The second child in the ring inquires in the same manner of the third, and so all round. Then the same question is asked with a like gesture of the left hand, and [continues] . . . with both hands, left foot, right foot, both feet, and finally, by uniting all the motions at once. `A nice long game.'" [2] I have recently seen college students play in a similar fashion a singing game called "One finger, one thumb, one hand; keep moving."

Another variant reported by Jean O. Heck, from Whittier school, Cincinnati, is called "Neighbor, neighbor, how art thee?" [3] Numerous other imitative motion songs are sung by Kansas children. Perhaps the most familiar is "The Mulberry Bush," a common version of which is:


1. Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush;
Here we go round the mulberry bush,

So early in the morning.

2. This is the way we wash our clothes,
All on a Monday morning.

3. This is the way we iron our clothes,
All on a Tuesday morning.

The song continues with the occupation of each day of the week. Children add verses at will, as "This is the way we wash our hands," or "This is the way we go to school." The old English May Day game, "Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May," is also sung to the same tune. [4]

A similar game, but not so well known, is "I Went to Visit My Friend One Day," the tune of which is that of the hymn, "Consolation Flowing Free." [5] This particular variant was sung by Lewis Madison Hull, of Nickerson, about 1904."