Here Is the Church

DESCRIPTION: "Here is the church, and here is the steeple. Open the doors and here are the people. Here is the parson going upstairs And here he is a-saying his prayers."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1903 (Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren)
KEYWORDS: clergy playparty
FOUND IN: New Zealand US(MW,So) Ireland
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 102, "Here is the church, and here is the steeple" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #605, p. 240, "(Here is the Church)"
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #79, "The Church and the Steeple" (1 text)
Sutton-Smith-NZ-GamesOfNewZealandChilden/FolkgamesOfChildren, p. 182, "(Here's the church, and here's the steeple)" (1 text)
Sackett/Koch-KansasFolklore, p. 121, "(This is the church)" (1 text)
Solomon-ZickaryZan, p. 14, "(There's the church)" (1 text)
Peirce-KeepTheKettleBoiling, p. 18, "(Here's the church)" (1 short text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 2, "Here's the Church" (1 text)
MidwestFolklore, W. L. McAtee, "Some Folklore of Grant County, Indiana, in the Nineties," Volume 1, Number 4 (WInter 1951), p. 254, "(Here's the church)" (1 text)
Roud #16226
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Here Are the Lady's Knives and Forks"
NOTES [48 words]: Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes: "Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren (1883) collected the first two lines of the text in the U.S.A." - BS
And this one is still played today, or was in my youth, although not really as a game; it was more a coordination exercise, I think. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: BGMG605

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