avoiding danger. Some of the more jocular rhymes celebrating the night linger on in
Scotland:
This is the nicht o’ Halloween
When the witches can be seen,
Some are black and some are green,
And some the colour o’ a turkey bean.Human society has a tendency to split into antagonistic groups, and children are no
exception. Other schools and localities, members of other religions or political parties,
and supporters of other football teams, are seen as peculiar, unpleasantly different and
possibly threatening. The rhymes children shout at these outsiders are no less irritating
for being traditional, and seem designed to lead to a skirmish. Those attending Forfar
Academy used, in the 1950s, to be harassed by: Academy kites, ye’re no very nice,/Ye
bake yer bannocks wi’ cats and mice. Recognisably the same formula had been used, a
hundred years before (as M.A.Denham reported in Folk-lore of the Northern Counties,
1858) to denigrate the inhabitants of a Northumberland village:
The Spittal wives are no’ very nice,
They bake their bread wi’ bugs and lice:
And after that they skin the cat,
And put it into their kail-pat,
That makes their broo’ baith thick and fat.Even artificial groups created in schools, as for instance teams denominated the Red
and the Blue, raise a partisan spirit, and enthusiastic supporters yell the following
adjustable encouragement:
Red, red, the bonnie red,
The red that should be worn;
Blue, blue, the dirty blue,
The blue that should be torn.The armoury of the schoolchild is filled with verbal weapons of attack and defence which
are of importance for survival in the milieu of the playground. They are effective because
they have been tested by time (though the children are not aware they are old) and
because they are immediately available in situations when there is no time for original
thought. Well-established rhymes of an insulting nature can be launched on the spur of
the moment against anyone felt to be obnoxious. A person who is ‘being silly’ is told,
You’re daft, you’re potty, you’re barmy,
You ought to join the army.
You got knocked out
With a brussel sprout,PLAYGROUND RHYMES AND THE ORAL TRADITION 179