All Hid

DESCRIPTION: "Is it all hid?" "I'm gonna count just one more time, Then I'm going to rock in mind." "Willy Willy Wee look out for me Here I come like a bumble bee." "I went down to the Devil's town Devil knock my daddy down."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (Vera Hall: AMMEM/Mosaic)
KEYWORDS: nonballad playparty
FOUND IN: US(SE)
Roud #22746
RECORDINGS:
Vera Hall, "Hiding-seek Song"(in AMMEM/Mosaic); "All Hid(Is It All Hid?)," 1948, ref=T807R03, https://archive.culturalequity.org/field-work/vera-hall-1948/new-york-city-548/all-hid accessed July 17, 2023)
Alan Lomax, "Talk About the Sea Island Folk Festival [All Hid]" (on USSeaIsland01)
NOTES [286 words]: The game is "I Spy" (William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883 ("Digitized by Google")), #105 p.105), or "Hide and Seek" (Alice Bertha Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: David Nutt, 1894 ("Digitized by Microsoft")), Vol. I, pp. 211-213,"Hide and Seek(1)"; James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England, (London: Percy Society, 1842 ("Digitized by Google")), p. 118, "Come out and play at hide-and-seek").
As Vera Hall describes it, "When I count you all go walk around the house, find a deal, and hide as while I count. When I get through counting and stand around from the base and you all try to slip around the house on the other side and beat me back to the base and get to home there." [AMMEM/Mosaic]. There are lots of hide and seek warning-and-acknowledgement songs in which the seeker asks whether everyone is hidden yet and the hiders reply "no" until all are hidden. Lomax and Hall sing the same tune but Lomax's song is a single verse: "Is all hid? Is all hid? Five ten fifteen twenty. Is all hid?" Hall's versions, the basis for description, have a set of couplets to pass the time between the question "Is it all hid" and the answer "Yes" or "No." Hall's 1939 and 1948 texts use different couplets. - BS
Zora Neal Hurston had a rhyme in Jonah's Gourd Vine:
Three li'l' hawses in duh stable,
One jumpt out and skint his nable.
All hid? All hid?
...
Ah got up 'bout half-past fo'
Forty fo' robbers wuz 'round mah do'
Ah got up and let em' in
Hit 'em ovah de head wid uh rollin' pin.
All hid? All hid?
Related? I don't know. Given the prevalence of hiding game, I think it not particularly likely. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: RcAllHid

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