Nursery rhymes Massacre
Growing up, the playground songs that I used to hear were either in mother tongue or Swahili, it was rare to hear kids sing English songs unless they were church hymns or popular lullabies. In school, we were taught English songs and since there was nowhere to confirm the lyrics we sang what we heard as long as it made sense to us. Things would get worse if the teacher teaching the songs had an accent if you did not get what they said you would have to fix your own words that rhyme with what the teacher said so that the song would make sense.
The most common songs that were sang in school included:
Row-row your boat
Rock-a-bye baby
A ring a ring of roses
Apart from the listed songs, there was this song that every kid sang while skipping the rope, every kid sang it differently. I recently asked my workmates how the used to sing the song and here are the responses I got:
“Bubbly gun bubbly gun number 28 I went for a walk now I stop under brake”
“Bubble gum bubble gum number 28 I went for a walk and now I stop under brake”
“Bubbly gun bubbly gun number 28 I went for a walk now I stop under brake”
“Babligan babligan number 28 I went for a walk but know I stop underbreak.
Recently I decided to google the lyrics of the song and to my surprise, I have been singing the song wrong for the last 18 years. The name of the song is PUBLIC VAN, not BUBBLY GUM hahaha.
Here are the lyrics to the public van nursery rhyme:
Public van, public van number 28.
I went for a ride but now I stepped on the break
blue band by by zero zero point zero is a round and a round.
I am a girl,you are a boy this is a factor that you must do
salute for the king and bend for the queen. Close your eyes and count to 15.
I am not sure if kids nowadays sing it as a public van or they sing the distorted versions, I am grateful for the internet and mostly youtube where I go and watch videos with lyrics and sing my childhood songs perfectly with the right words.
What is the childhood song that you used to sing wrongly but sounded right to you?
