Why it seems important, I'm not sure. But it bothers me to half-remember events from my childhood, with no assurance that I've pierced the fog of time correctly. Did it really happen? And if so, did it happen as I remember?
That "botherment" applies to songs, as well. In sixth grade chorus, we sang a nonsense song -- which I now discover is classified as bluegrass -- which both entertained me and puzzled me. Do I remember the lyrics correctly? I found myself singing it in the shower this morning, and this is how I remember one of the verses and the chorus:
My true love lives up the river,
Hey dee-ing dang, dilly dally day.
A few more jumps and I'll be with her,
Hey dee-ing dang, dilly dally day.
Kemo kimo, dee row art,
Mi-hee, mi-hai, mi-hum drum penny winkle,
Tit tat pitty pat, blue eyed pussy cat,
Sing song kitty won't you kai me oh?
What puzzled me, as a kid, about the song was not the nonsense chorus (reproduced here strictly phonetically; I have no idea how it was spelled in our song book) but that one verse.
I knew from my careful and obsessive reading of Batman comics that "up the river" meant only one thing -- "in prison." (Only later did I learn that this was New York slang for Sing Sing, a prison that was literally up the Hudson River.) But if the singer's true love was in prison, why would a "few more jumps" reunite the star-crossed lovers? Well, my 12-year-old brain concluded, the only way you get to prison is to commit a crime. A "jump" must be a thug term for a robbery or a burglary.
But that was my hypothesis, not my firm conclusion. It took an adult mind to appreciate that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and that sometimes living up the river simply means living up the river.
I've tried to find the verse that I've provided you, but have been unsuccessful. Nat King Cole recorded a version of Kemo Kimo, called "The Magic Song," in 1947. But his recording had totally different lyrics for the verses, and largely different lyrics for the chorus.
Ke-mo, ki-mo spare-o-spare
Ma-hi, ma-ho, ma-rump-sticka-pumpernickle
Soup-bang, nip-cat, polly-mitcha-cameo
I love you.
The "2nd South Carolina String Band" had a mildly racist ("white folks" and "darkies") version, with totally different verse lyrics. Its chorus was somewhat closer to the one that I recall than was Nat King Cole's.
Kemo, kimo! There! oh where?--
With a hi, and a ho, and a in come Sally, singing
Sometimes penny winkle, lingtum, nipcat,
Sing song, Kitty, can't you ki' me, oh!
I'm almost certain that I remember correctly the chorus as we were taught it (spelling excepted), and that in some dark school district warehouse there remain stacks of moldy school song books containing "my" Kemo Kimo.
Ah, would but that I could get my hands on one!
5 comments:
Nat King Cole's version has run through my head for many years. But I recall it as "Kemo, kymo, share a stand" -- or something like that.
My mother's father used to use this as a bouncing rhyme with me and my sister when we were *very* small: "m'hey and m'ho and my humdrum periwinkle, tit tat kitty cat, blue-eyed pussycat, sing-song kitty and awaaaay we go!"
Your grandfather's version comes about as close to my memory of the lyrics as any I've seen.
And I can't vouch completely for the accuracy of my own sixth-grade memory, although I'm pretty sure that's what we sang.
This was my father's song that he said his mother use to sing to him. Her mother was Cherokee from Kentucky.
Kemo kimo, dairo arnie, hiney hony,
Hum drum periwinkle,
Tic tac, pitty pat,
Blue eyed pussycat,
Sing song kitty,
Can't you ki me O
Hello! It is now 17 August 2022; however, I just found your old blog post after searching on clearly related lyrics for a "nonsense" song I was also taught in, I think, 2nd grade? I am now 67, so clearly this odd sing-song has stuck with me for decades. At the time, we had a black teacher and folk musician who told us that these lyrics dated back to the pre-Civil War South. Black women would teach this "patty cake" game song (sometimes chanted to jumping rope) to the white children in their care; however, it was originally sung in an African language (I do not recall which one). White children could only learn it by converting the lyrics into something that emulated "English." The song thereafter became memorable, but nonsensical.
To this day, I wonder about the potential African language origin of this song. I learned slightly different lyrics than you and others who have posted here, though there are clearly similarities. I could find nothing else about this song online! I hope someone else can fill in more information here. Here are the lyrics I learned (spelled phonetically and chanted in a sing-song style):
Keemie kimee kiree-oh
me-hee me-high me humdrum periwinkle
pit pat pitty tat
blue-eyed pussy cat
sing-song kitty won't you kimee oh
I cannot seem to post with my own e-mail, so I will do so "anonymously."
Lori
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