Ish Biddly Oten Doten Bobo Ba Deeten Dotten

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Meg from Kentucky.

Hello, Meg from Kentucky.

Hello, Meg.

When I was growing up in New England, outside Boston, my dad used to say this little thing all the time to children. Sort of an entertainment, he’d walk up behind you and whisper it in your ear or just say it over your shoulder. And it was Ispidlyotendotin Bobobeditin Dotin Whenotin. And I want to know where that came from.

All right. You got to do that again, Meg.

Ispidlyotendotin Bobobeditin Dotin Whenotin. Ispidlyotendotin Bobobeditin Dotin. What’s the end of it?

Ispidlyotendotin Bobobeditin Dotin Whenotin. Like a like a firecracker going out. Like a snake at the end. Something.

Okay. And this was his idea of entertainment?

Yeah. Well, he couldn’t really keep up with adult conversations, so he’d go off and mess with kids.

Oh, my gosh. It was just one of his things. And he never said where it came from. And he used to also sing a couple of things about mosquitoes and bars of soap and things that I have discovered were camp songs. From the 40s and 50s, maybe, like I wish I was a little musky toe. And I think that probably came from my mother’s sister and father, just seemed more like them. And my aunt, my mom’s sister, was a Girl Scout for years in that era.

Well, I tell you, the flashing lights went off as soon as you said camp over here.

Yeah, I think probably there are lots of Girl Scouts and lots of Boy Scouts or anybody who’s ever been away to sleepaway camp who’s singing right along with you or Meg, they’re saying, no, no, no, I heard a different version. My version goes like this because I heard this at camp when I was a little kid. It’s been around for decades and it goes by various names. It’s part of a larger song called Flea Fly Flow and it involves clapping or patting your hands, you know, kind of like patty cake. And sometimes some versions of it get faster and faster and faster. Some of them get quieter and quieter and quieter and end with that sort of hissing sound. But the one that I learned as a kid was flea, flea fly, flea fly flow, flea fly flow, la vista, Achi kachikumarachi, ooh, ish, kiddly, otan, botan, bib, bib, adotan, watan, tontan, shh.

And about what year would that be, Martha, if you don’t mind me asking?

1894.

Oh, you’re like me, older than dirt. I asked because I found a version in a Corona California high school yearbook from 1964 that’s very similar. It’s on the page for the cheerleaders. And it’s very similar. And we had a caller or we had a listener email us a version in 2016 that was very similar as well. But in the middle, it’s cumulata, cumulata, vista.

Oh, no, no, no, not the vista. It does sound like a flea fly. That definitely sounds like a camp song when you put all that together.

Yeah. I can see lots of little heads bobbing along. There’s another history here. Parts of this song have popped up in other arenas and movies and songs outside of the camp experience.

Yeah. For example, there was a 1964 Chubby Checker song, Kumulabiste, which actually sounds very much like that. I mean, it’s the same melody, the Kumulabiste. There’s also a song in the 1944 movie National Barn Dance. That’s called Down Home Rag, and it includes the words Deaton, Dotton, Duton, the same words that appear in this camp song. And its lyrics are copyright 1939, so that gives us an early date to work with. And so that last part, the Deaton Dottons, got another history. So there’s an idea here that maybe this camp song is pieced together from different parts of nonsense, from other parts of American life, American folklore.

Plus, we haven’t even talked about jazz music and scat. So there’s this whole history of scat starting about in the 1920s, which is incredibly similar to some of this. And so it’s entirely possible all of this goes back to jazz music and scat.

Thank you for confirming some of my suspicions and giving me some more information that was completely new to me because that’s great.

All right. Take care of yourself, Meg. Call us again sometime.

Thank you. I will.

All right. Be well.

Bye.

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