Three, Six, Nine

DESCRIPTION: "Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine." The monkey "chewed tobacco on the street car line" or "got tangled in a telephone line." "The line broke, the monkey got choked, And they all went to heaven" in a row boat/luxury boat," or all but the billy goat.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Fauset)
KEYWORDS: wine playparty animal bird
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond)) US(So) Ireland
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 135, "Three, Six, Nine" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #412, "Once upon a time, A goose drank wine" (1 text)
Brady-AllInAllIn, p. 37, "3, 6, 9" (1 text)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Arthur Huff Fauset, "Negro Folk Tales from the South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana," Vol. XL, No. 157 (Jul 1927), #VII.3 p. 293 ("Once upon a time, the goose drank wine") (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Patricia Shehan Campbell, Songs in Their Heads (New York, 1998 (copyrighted material limited preview "Digitized by Google")) p. 43, ("Three, six, nine, The goose drank wine") (1 text)
Roud #18987
NOTES [117 words]: Somewhat similar is "Hopalong Peter": "...the duck drank wine, The goose played the fiddle on the pumpkin vine."
See Shirley Ellis's version [Congress 234, according to the Shirley Ellis discography on the Spectro Pop Express site], 'The Clapping Song', 1965 [which includes the 'Rubber Dolly' verse and 'Three, Six, Nine', among others]." - BS
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes thinks that this "Derives from a formula opening of English tales." However, other than Abrahams's own version, I have never seen a version start with "Once upon a time"; almost all begin with "Three six nine." So I think "Once upon a time" is a corruption, not the original. Brady-AllInAllIn calls it a "hot hands" (clapping) game. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: OpGa135

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