Its Head Popped Off

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yes, hi. This is Michael calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Michael. Welcome to the program. Hey, Michael. Yeah, hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

So I wanted to see if you could help me gain some insight into a little jingle from my childhood that came up recently. The whole reason this came up is because it’s springtime down here, and my wife and I were out for a walk with our son. And among other things, the dandelions are blooming. So we thought it’d be fun to teach our son this little jingle that we both knew, which is you pick up the dandelion and hold it by the stem with your thumb under the head of the flower, kind of like you’re going to flip a coin. As you sing this little jingle, you flick the head of the dandelion off. And so the jingle goes, mama had a baby and its head popped off. And then as you finish the jingle, you pop the dandelion off. Of course, my son thought it was fun, as I remember thinking it was when I was a kid.

And later that day, we went over to a neighbor’s house and my son wanted to teach his friend this jingle. And he did the little jingle and flicked the head of the dandelion. And I noticed the parents of the friend looked at him with a little bit of concern and possibly even horror, because I guess it is kind of a dark little jingle. But it occurred to me at that point that they must not have ever heard this when they were kids. Everyone we knew growing up knew it. And so we started thinking about this. And we’re both from New England, my wife from Boston, and I’m from southern New Hampshire. And now we’re down in Texas, and we’ve since asked anyone who we think to ask down who’s from Texas, and no one’s ever heard of it. So maybe we could get to the bottom of this.

Yeah, it would be jarring to hear it for the very first time. It reminds me of that lullaby rockabye baby in the treetop, you know, about the bow breaking and the cradle falling. I mean, there’s some pretty dark things that…

Yeah, or ring around the rosy, I suppose, is rather dark, too.

Yeah, it’s a myth that that’s connected to the plague, though.

Oh, is that right?

Oh, interesting.

Because a lot of people who I’ve asked about this dandelion jingle, they say, oh, it sounds very dark, like the ring around the rosy. It’s fairly widespread. A number of years ago, there was a conversation on the website Metafilter, which is a great community of folks, and they talked about this, and some people chimed in to say that there was a variant in Scotland, for example, in the 1970s, where it was something along the line of married queen of Scots got her head chopped off. That’s the version they used. And somebody else jumped in to mention that they didn’t use dandelions. They used what is known as a plantain. It’s not like the kind that you eat, but it’s got long leaves. It’s very common in the yard if you don’t have a particularly nice yard. And it’s got the little stem that pops up in the middle with the seed pod on the end of it. And you make a little loop around that seed head and pop it right off.

We did that too, but we called it guns. We just made guns that way. They pop them off and they fly. They fly 10, 15 feet maybe.

I remember doing it with just about any flower, but the dandelions were the ones that it was understood we could pick them and dispose of them.

Let me ask you, while we’re talking about this kind of children’s folklore, did you do the thing where you hold the yellow flower up to the chin to find out if they like butter?

We did, yes. And that’s something that we asked around about as well. And my wife and I both did that.

Yeah, we did too. But usually it turned into a chance to smear the dandelion on the other person’s face.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s right. We had another myth that if you smeared it on the chin and a certain amount of the yellow pollen stayed there, that meant something too. So that was clearly manufactured for fun. But anyway.

All the crazy stuff.

So it’s widespread, not necessarily regional, and lots of different variations, probably because it’s passed from mouth to ear rather than on the printed page.

Well, what we’re going to do is I know we’re going to get a ton of email on this.

Yeah, we will.

Everyone’s going to have these memories, and we’ll find out if people, lots of folks in Texas say it, all right?

Okay, thanks.

Thanks for your call.

All right.

Really appreciate it.

It’s fun going down these old roads, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

Okay.

All right.

Take care.

Take care.

I used to jump rope and there was that awful one. My mother and your mother were hanging up clothes. My mother punched your mother in the nose.

Yes, yes.

What color was the blood?

And then you go through all these different colors.

Right, until they trip and that’s the color that it was.

I mean, what kind of stuff are we teaching kids?

No, kids are teaching each other.

Well, that’s true.

Right, right?

Maybe a way of dealing with all the dark uncertainty in the world and life.

And also kind of a matter of factness, though, about the world. The world has death and darkness in it. The kids are more resilient than maybe we think.

I loved folklore books when I was a kid.

And I know that you, the listeners, have tons of folklore in your life. This is a great place to share at 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.