If you want to sound defiant, you could do worse than exclaiming, “Nixie on your tintype!” This phrase, meaning something to the effect of “spit on your face,” popped up in Marjorie Benton Cooke’s 1914 book, Bambi (not related to the sweet little deer). Kristin Anderson, a listener from Apalachicola, Florida, shares this great poem that makes use of the phrase. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Nixie on Your Tintype”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Kristen Anderson in Apalachicola, Florida.
Hi, Kristen. Apalachicola.
Yes.
All right. Well, welcome to the show.
How can we help today?
Thank you.
Well, when I was a child, my mother taught me this funny little poem, which she said her grandmother had taught her. And my mom was born in 1916, so her mother’s mother would have been somewhere in the 19th century.
Okay. Do you have the poem memorized?
Yes, I do.
Oh, let’s hear it.
A police pan saw a bit of lum sitting on a serp cone chewing dubber rum. Said the police pan, send me gum. Tixie on your nint type, said the bit of lum.
Okay.
What does that mean in English?
Okay. In regular English, a policeman saw a little bum sitting on a curbstone chewing rubber gum. Said the policeman, give me some. Nixie on your tintype, said the little bum.
And so this has passed from mother to daughter for a long time.
Yes, three generations.
Wow, and in what context? Were you being bounced on her knee?
Well, you know, working around in the kitchen or, you know, just maybe riding in the car.
Okay.
And my mom also told me that Nixie on your tintype was considered to be very sassy and rude.
Those days.
Yeah, that’s the phrase that jumps out at me.
I could see that.
Nixie on your tintype.
Yeah, nixie comes from the German nix, right? For no, or it’s a negative. And then tintype would be a picture of your face, right? The old-fashioned kind of photography method, right?
Right.
Yes, exactly.
So I don’t know what does that mean, spitting on your face? Or like, I put an X across your photograph?
Yeah.
How does that work?
Yeah, something like that, I think.
Was that your sense of it, Kristen?
Oh, yes.
-huh.
So you’re just driving along, jetting down the highway, and you rip out with this poem just because it occurs to you?
Well, I’m at a stage in my life where I’m trying to remember things, especially things that my mom taught me, because I don’t have any children and my niece is now almost 30. And I just think it’s kind of fun to keep these things going in the family. And then I thought, well, why not share it more widely?
Very good.
There it is.
I agree. You know, I’m digging around and I see almost a word for word example of this from a book published in 1914. And it’s called Bambi. It has nothing to do with the little cute deer, though. It’s about a young woman and her entering into society and that sort of thing. But it’s almost exactly word for word the same one. So this kind of confirms that at the very least, it wasn’t just the family rhyme. Other people knew this rhyme. And maybe there was a period in America where people, this was one of the things that you memorized for schoolwork. Who knows?
Boy, it just does not come up that often, though.
I could hear it on the playground because Nixie on your tintype sounds like, it’s got the same rhythm as na-na-na-boo-boo. Nixie on your tintype.
Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. Is there a melody to this? You read it, but is there sometimes a song to it?
Well, no, I never heard that, but it wouldn’t surprise me, I suppose.
Okay.
Can you give us another reading one more time?
Okay.
A molise pan saw a bit of lum sitting on a syrup cone chewing gubber rum. Said the molise pan, see me gum. Pixie on your nintite, said the bit of lum.
Well, we’ll make sure to put that poem in full, both versions, on the website. And I want to thank you so much, Kristen, for calling with that and sharing it, because now you’ve done what you wanted to do. You’ve passed it along. You’ve passed it along.
Thank you.
Take care now.
Okay, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
That’s great.
Nixie on your tintype.
Nixie on your tintype.
What’s the opposite of that?
Well, you know, I used to work in a post office years and years and years ago, and Nixies were the letters for whom we couldn’t find addressee.
That’s right.
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It isn’t “nixie,” it’s “ninny,” as in the Spoonerized poem my mother (b. Fairmont, MN 1905) used to recite:
Once there was a molicepan,
Saw a bittle lum
Sittin’ on a pence fost,
Chewin’ gubber rum.
“O,” said the molicepan,
“Won’t you simme gum?”
“Tinny on your nintype,”
Said the bittle lum.
I know this show is over a year old, but it was just rebroadcast, so it’s new for me. My great Aunt also taught me this poem, but without any nixies
Once there was a molicepan, who met a bittle lum
sitting on a sturbing cone, chewing gubber rum
“please,” asked the molicepan, “won’t you simme gum?”
not by a sam dite, said the bittle lum
I assume “not by a dam site” or is it “damned sight” carries a similar insult
I just heard this for the first time as well, and I was struck by the possibility that this could have been one of those silly songs that parents sing to children as they tweak their noses or belly buttons. Or, based on one of Grant’s questions regarding the rhythm of the poem, maybe it’s a song that children used to keep time while jumping rope?