Brown Girl in the Ring: An Anthology of Song Games from the Eastern Caribbean Hardcover - 1997

Excerpt

Miss Mary Mack

Sung and played by a group of girls aged fourteen at El Socorro Central Government School, Port of Spain, Trinidad.

This classic rhyme has a marvelous swing. Thousands of English-speaking children in the Caribbean and elsewhere have clapped, swung, skipped, and danced to it as, no doubt, will thousands more to come.

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,
All dressed in black, black, black,
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,
Upon her back, back, back.
She asked her mother, mother, mother,
For fifty cents, cents, cents,
To see the elephant, elephant, elephant,
Jump over the fence, fence, fence.
It jumped so high, high, high,
It started to fly, fly, fly,
It was so funny, funny, funny,
Like bread and honey, honey, honey.
And that's the end, end, end,
Of Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,
All dressed in black, black, black.

The rhyme may continue, if desired, with the next line "With silver buttons," et seq., so that play need never end.

TO PLAY: Trinidadian children clap to this rhyme, facing partners, either as pairs or in parallel lines. Unlike those clapping
games in which a steady clap is maintained throughout, Trinidadian children clap here only on the repeated words at the end of
each line, using a series of three movements repeated in order. This pattern continues throughout the song.

1. On "Mack, Mack, Mack," partners clap hands straight across three times (right hand to partner's left; left to partner's right).
2. On "black, black, black," the same clap is used except that between each clap each player crosses her wrists on her own chest before reaching forward to clap again.
3. On "buttons, buttons, buttons," each slaps his own knees with both palms three times.

ABOUT THE SONG: The rhyme "Miss Mary Mack" is everywhere different and everywhere the same. From Great Britain to Georgia to Trinidad, this chant (used variously for jumping rope, marching, and clapping play) consists of a series of wandering couplets combined and recombined in hundreds of different patterns; the initial four lines are almost the only ones to remain unvaried. The universal popularity of this perfect song and its endless variations provide the most convincing possible evidence of the ineradicable strength, the sheer inevitability, of oral tradition.