Intery Mintery Cutery Corn

DESCRIPTION: Counting-out rhyme: "Intery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and briar thorn, Wire, briar, (or "wild briar") limber lock, FIve geese in a flock, SIt and sing by a spring, O-U-T and in again. Over yonder steep hill... Black finger, out of the game."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1844 (Halliwell)
KEYWORDS: playparty nonballad food bird | counting-out
FOUND IN: US(NE,So)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #87, "Intery Mintery" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 252, "Intery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #632 n. 109, pp. 249-250, "(As I went up the brandy hill)"
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #149, "Counting Rhymes" (8 texts of the "One-ery, Two-ery, Ickery, Ann" type, 4 of "Eenie Meenie Minie Mo (Counting Rhyme)", 1 of "Intery Mintery Cutery Corn", 1 of "Alphabet Songs", 1 of "Monday's Child", and 20 miscellaneous rhymes)
Solomon-ZickaryZan, p. 48, "Wire Briar"; p. 68, "One Flew Over"; p. 69, "Dirty Dishrag," "Wire Briar" (4 texts, although several have only the "Wire Briar" part with no "Intery Mintery...."); p. 69, "The Old Cuckoo's Nest" (1 text, combining the "Wire Briar" portion of "Intery Mintery Cutery Corn" with the "Some flew east" portion of "Charley Barley")
Withers-EenieMeenieMinieMo, p. 45, "Fingers on the Table" (1 text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 115, "Intery, mintery, cutery, corn"; "Intery, mintery, country corn"; p. 124, "Wire, briar, limberlock: (3 texts)
Withers-EenieMeenieMinieMo, p. 14, "(Intery, mintery, cutery corn)" (1 text)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #253, "Intry mintry cutry corn" (1 text); compare #254, "Inty ninty tibbety fig" (1 text, all nonsense except the "out goes you" line; it might have been inspired by this)
MidwestFolklore, W. L. McAtee, "Some Folklore of Grant County, Indiana, in the Nineties," Volume 1, Number 4 (WInter 1951), p. 256, "(Wire, brier, limber lock)" (1 text)
Roud #19636 and 22840
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "One Two Three Four, Mary at the Cottage Door" ("O-U-T spells out" lyric) and references there
NOTES [98 words]: Withers-EenieMeenieMinieMo calls this "fingers on the table" because the method used for counting-out involved players putting their index fingers on the table, with the rhyme used to pick one finger, which was then removed. The process repeated until only one player was left, who was "it." I doubt this was the actual method used; the Withers text is long enough to take about half a minute to recite. If you have, say, six players, two fingers each, that means five and a half minutes to choose an "it." That's just too long. I suspect the rhyme was used just once, not repeatedly. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: OO2252

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