Clapping games--Interesting Random Facts

I've been doing more and more clapping songs with my kids these days, which has caused my mind to drift back to the songs that were sung on the playground and on the bus in my elementary school days.

"Hmmm, I wonder if there's anything on Wikipedia about those old children's chants," I thought to myself.

And sure enough, there is:

Miss Lucy had a baby  [The Wikipidia article is titled "Miss Lucy had a baby", but my memory is "Miss Susie" and sure enough, the American lyrics in the Wikipedia entry are "Miss Susie." Anyway... ]. According to Wikipedia:

"Miss Lucy had a baby...", also known by various other names,^[9] is an American schoolyard rhyme. Originally used as a jump-rope chant, it is now more often sung alone or as part of a clapping game. It has many variations, possibly originating from it, or from its predecessors.^[10][11]

Yes, this jives with my own recollection. I remember it being a clapping game song more than a jump-rope chant.

The song is often combined or confused with the similar but cruder "Miss Susie had a steamboat", which uses the same tune and was also used as a jump-rope game.

Again, this jives.  I believe the version I remember hearing on the bus did indeed combine these two songs into one:

Wikipedia lists the American version of lyrics as follows:

Miss Susie had a baby

His name was Tiny Tim

She put him in the bathtub

To see if he could swim. 

He drank up all the water.

He ate up all the soap.

He tried to eat the bathtub

But it wouldn't go down his throat. 

Miss Susie called the doctor.

The doctor called the nurse.

The nurse called the lady

With the alligator purse. 

Out ran the doctor.

Out ran the nurse.

Out ran the lady

With the alligator purse. 

And now Tiny Tim

Is home sick in bed,

With soap in his throat

And bubbles in his head.

...my own memory from the school bus is that there was an additional verse that went "In came the doctor, in came the nusre, in came the lady with the alligator purse"  that was in between the 4th and 5th stanza.  Also, I don't recognize the very last stanza.

If memory serves, the girls on my bus never sang that last stanza, and instead used to go directly from "out ran the lady with the alligator purse" right into the lyrics from "Miss Lucy had a steamboat", which, according to Wikipedia, ran as follows:

Miss Susie had a steamboat,

The steamboat had a bell,

Miss Susie went to heaven,

The steamboat went to...

Hello Operator,

Please give me Number 9,

And if you disconnect me,

I'll kick you from...

Behind the 'refrigerator,

There was a piece of glass,

Miss Susie sat upon it,

And broke her little...

Ask me no more questions,

Tell me no more lies,

The boys are in the bathroom,

Zipping down their...

Flies are in the meadow,

The bees are in the park,

Miss Susie and her boyfriend

Are kissing in the D-A-R-K

Dark, dark, dark

D-A-R-K D-A-R-K dark dark dark

Dark is like a movie,

A movie’s like a show.

A show is like a TV set,

And that is all I know

I know I know my ma,

I know I know my pa.

I know I know my sister

With the forty acre bra.

My ma gave me a nickel

My pa gave me a dime

My sister gave me a boyfriend and his name was Frankenstein

He made me do the dishes

He made me do the wash

He made me clean his underwear

So I kicked him into squash

I kicked him into London

I kicked him into France

I kicked him to Hawaii where he learned to hula dance

(Hula hula)

...I think those lyrics sound right to me, except the earlier stanza's are more familiar than the later ones.  But here the memory gets hazy.  I want to say on my school bus "...and that is all I know" was usually the last line, but I don't remember for sure.

Anyway, as far as I can remember, these "Miss Susie" clapping songs were never taught in class, never in any books, never on television, and certainly never taught by parents.  They were just lyrics that kids picked up at school.

Interesting than that, according to Wikipedia, the lyrics go back to the 1950s or before:

The history of the Miss Susie similar rhyme has been studied, tracing it back to the 1950s, in Josepha Sherman's article published by the American Folklore Society.^[13] However, several other books and articles show similar versions used as far back as the end of the 19th century.^[14]

So, does that mean for 50 years, the song was just passed down from one grade to the next in the schoolyard, with no help from parents or teachers?  Just by the school children keeping it alive themselves? Pretty impressive, no?  

...actually, I guess I shouldn't be so amazed.  Passing oral rhymes down from one group of children to the next is how the oral tradition has worked for millennia.  That's how all of our nursery rhymes came to be.  

I never actually sang this song at school myself.  As I remember, the clapping games were things that only the girls did.  But the lyrics are still burned into my memory from hearing the girls on the bus sing it over and over again.

I wonder.  Is this song still being clapped out on the buses nowadays?