How Miss Suzie and Tiny Tim got clean(er)

One of the more popular songs (among girls) were the stories of Lulu (who is also known as Miss Suzie in some versions)

Lulu had a steamboat
the steamboat had a bell
lulu went to heaven
the steamboat went to
hello operator
please give me number nine
and if you disconnect me,
I'll kick in your
behind the 'frigerator
there was a piece of glass
lulu sat upon it
and bust her silly
ask me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
and that is the story
oh how lulu died

The "Almost Cussing" songs are awfully widespread - South Park did a great one a while ago. No idea how far back this goes, but probably at least as far back as the day when you had to ask operators to get you #9, a practice that was totally unknown among my generation, though we sang the song anyway. Iona Opie notes that before it was a playground song, Victorians used to recite it (or verses almost exactly like it) in parlors as serious entertainment! Plenty of variations still go around. Many follow "ask me no more questions / I'll tell you more lies" with

"the boys are in the bathroom / zipping up their flies."

THis neatly connects it to another song in the genre: Up in the Mountains, but the line has probably been around as long as people have been calling zippers "flies."

The name "Lulu" is used fairly interchangably with other names, most often "Miss Suzie" and "Rosie." Folklorists notice that the song is often coupled with another popular hit:

Miss Suzie had a baby
she named it tiny Tim
she put it in the bathtub
to see if he could swim
he ate up all the water
he drank up all the soap
now he's home, sick in bed
with a frog in his throat.
She called for the doctor
she called for the nurse
she called for the lady with the alligator purse
mumps, said the doctor
mumps, said the nurse
nothing, said the lady with the alligator purse

Plenty of variations, such as "he tried to eat the bathtub, but it wouldn't fit hi throat." It's been sung in about that way since at least the 1920s in England, but it's actually a variation of a whole series of bawdy drinking songs about a prostitute name Lulu, according to Iona Opie's "The Singing Game." She sites one particular version:

Lulu had a baby, which was an awful shock
she couldn't call it Lulu cause the bastard had a____

You can guess the last word. By the 1920s, it had morphed into a rhyme set-up not unlike the "Steamboat" song:

Lulu Had a baby, she named it sunny Jim
she took it to the bathroom to see if it could swim
it swam to the bottom, it swam to the top
Lulu got excited, and grabbed it by the
cocktails, ginger ale, two and six a glass....

By the 1950s, the lady with the alligator purse was showing up in versions of the song. The "cocktails" line was still being recorded in England in 1950s, and in New York in the late 1970s, though in the states it morphed to "two bits a glass" (I'd be interested to see if it still turns up as "two and six a glass" in England now that they've been on decimal currency for a couple of generations). Sunny Jim was the name of the mascot for Force cereal, which was created in 1902, but which I'm not 100% sure you could get in England. It could be a reference to any number of people who were known as Sunny Jim.

Meanwhile, US folklorists (reporting in Sherman's book at the right) recorded one in Long Island, circa 1980, that went:

Bang Bang Rosie
Rosie's gone away
she's going to have a baby
that's why she's gone away
Rosie had two boyfriends
both of them were rich
one was the son of a lawyer
one was the son a
bang, bang Rosie
Rosie's gone away
She's going to have a baby
that's why she's gone away.
Rosie had a rooster
Rosie had a duck
she put them both together
to see if they could
bang bang rosie....
in the refrigerator
there is a piece of glass
and if you do not like
you can stick it up your
bang bang rosie.....

This is a nearly verbatim version of "Bang Bang Lulu," a bawdy tavern song that, along with other songs about Lulu, goes back to something like the 18th century (the melody is just about like "Good Night Ladies"). It appears to have been a bawdy sea shanty that, like most folk songs from the British Isles, gradually morphed into an Appallachian ballad. Then, finally, it became a pair of playground songs. The names "Rosie," "Miss Suzie" and "Lulu" have been used somewhat interchangably since the tavern song days.

There are countless variations, of course, some of which more neatly connect the new songs to the earlier sources, and some of which insert more modern, topical references (Sherman's book mentions a version that replaces "behind the refrigerator" with "behind the iron curtain" that their source learned in Germany in the 1960s) and some of which go off on tangents of their own. For a good 100 years, at least, kids thought the baby "Tiny TIm" was named after the Dickens character, but there were probably plenty of kids in the late 1960s who thought they were singing about the high-voiced guy with the ukelele of whom talk shows of the day just couldn't get enough.

Post the versions from YOUR playground in the comments!