I brought it home and sang it for my mom - and was utterly astounded when she finished it. I had learned the 'Miss Susie' rhyme in grade school from some friends. It was an experience I had as a kid quite similar to that that actually made me interested in studying folklore. My five-year-old niece can sing 'Jingle Bells, Batman smells, / Robin laid an egg,' the same way I did decades ago, but surely no adult taught it to her. I've always been interested in that weird little subculture of kid knowledge. It's actually one of the hardest cultures for a scholar to penetrate very insular, and protective of its own knowledge. Kids know that adults don't approve of most of their nastier, meaner, dirtier content, and won't share it easily - they don't want to embarass themselves or appear impolite or get in trouble. One of the research problems that plagues children's folklorists is the fact that kids are reluctant informants. Reading these and seeing how tame they are compared to what I remember

Ta ra ra boom d