1:42am September 30, 2014

Evolution of a “dirty” children’s rhyme.

I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with those children’s rhymes that had swearing in them, or were risqué, or otherwise what we’d now call NSFW.  In this post I’m going to be talking about the one that starts off “There’s a place in France…” just because I heard so many versions of it, so rapidly expanding on each other, as a kid.  But just in case, I’m going to put it behind a Read More cut.  So don’t go behind this cut if you don’t want to hear about mildly risqué children’s rhymes, and try to reply beneath the cut if you add any new versions, too.

So the first version I was taught went like this:

There’s a place in France, where the women wear no pants, and the men go round, with their thingies hangin’ down.

Then I heard:

There’s a place in France, where the naked ladies dance.  There’s a hole in the wall, where the men can see it all.

Which rapidly progressed to:

There’s a place in France, where the naked ladies dance.  There’s a hole in the wall, where the men can see it all.  But the ladies don’t care, cuz they can see the men’s underwear.

I haven’t heard any other versions.  And nobody ever seems to have heard of that first version I mentioned (no naked ladies, just people not wearing pants).  I’d be curious about answers to any of the following questions:

• Has anyone else ever heard that first version (“where the women wear no pants”) or any variations on it?
• If you’ve heard variations on the first one, what are they?
• Have you heard any variations on any version of this rhyme that I haven’t posted here?
• If so, what are they?

I don’t know why I’m so curious about a silly children’s rhyme, but I get curious about things like this a lot.  I’m also intrigued, looking back, at exactly how many children’s clapping/jump rope songs have clear sexual innuendo in them if not outright references like this.  Or else excuses to swear.  (Everyone has to remember “Miss Susie Had A Steamboat”.)  But surprising, surprising amounts of sexual stuff.  

I mean I know that children often sing about what’s forbidden to them, but some of the songs are ones that I didn’t understand even had sexual content until I was an adult, to us children it was just innocent rhymes.  Unlike this one, where everyone knew it was about nudity at the very least.  There were others that just made me go “…whoa….” when I realized their actual meaning, either from the words or from the motions that went with the words.

Anyway, if you have answers to any of these questions, please reply on this side of the cut just in case for some reason people don’t want these things on their dash.

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