Down in the Meadow Not Far Off

DESCRIPTION: Jump-rope rhyme. "Down in the meadow not far off, The blue jay (sat/died) with the whooping cough. He whooped so hard with the whooping cough, He whooped his head and his tail right off"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1963 (Southern Folklore Quarterly, according to Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes)
KEYWORDS: bird disease jumprope floatingverses | blue jay whooping cough
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #118, "Down in the meadow not far off" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Up in a Loft A Long Way Off" (lyrics)
NOTES [80 words]: Every word of this is found in other songs -- often several other songs. But I haven't seen the combination elsewhere. I wouldn't trust the citations in Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, though; I suspect he's lumping some of the floating-verse songs. It possibly should be lumped with "Up in a Loft a Long Way Off," which includes a lot of the same floating material.
For more on whooping cough, and its (non)-occurrence in animals, see the notes to "Old Cow Died of Whooping Cough." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: AJRR118

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