Sailor Went to Sea, A
DESCRIPTION: "A sailor went to sea ... To see what he could see ... all that he could see ... Was the bottom of the deep blue sea." He goes to "chop, chop, chop," ... to "knee, knee, knee," ... to "toe, toe, toe," ....
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1955 (Western Folklore)
KEYWORDS: nonsense playparty sailor
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South)) Australia US(So,SW)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 144, "A Sailor Went to Sea" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #503, "The Sailor went to sea" (1 text)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Portia Naomi Crawford, "A Study of Negro Folk Songs from Greensboro, North Carolina and Surrounding Towns," Vol. XVI, No. 2 (Oct 1968), pp. 80-81, "A Sailor Went to Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Jean Feldman, Transition Time: Let's Do Something Different (1995 (copyrighted material limited preview "Digitized by Google")) p. 192, "A Sailor Went to Sea" (1 text)
Gwenda Beed Davey and Graham Seal, _A Guide to Australian Folklore_, Kangaroo Press, 2003, p. 151, "(A sailor went to see, see, see)" (1 short text, described as a handclapping game)
Roud #18338
RECORDINGS:
Alessandra Delia-Lôbo, Cameo Delia, "A Sailor Went to Sea" (Piotr-Archive #386, recorded 12/18/2022)
NOTES [86 words]: The second and subsequent verses are completed by replacing "sea" by "chop," then "knee," then "toe," etc. Only the first verse makes sense. In the last verse "A sailor went to sea, chop, knee, toe, ...." See Feldman for an example.
Another rhyme, sharing the first verse, but otherwise different in form and function, is in Frank Rutherford, All the Way to Pennywell (1971,Durham), pp. 38-39, ("I know a lad across the ocean"). Rutherford also reports the first verse as a stand-alone hand-clapping song (p. 77). - BS
Last updated in version 6.7
File: OpGa144
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