And that will never do.
Now, the American soldiers are not dressed in red coats, but some years ago their firemen were; this fact enabled the American girls (God bless ’em!) to shape the song so as to meet their case. So, without any other alteration worth noticing, they sing and act the song through just the same as our English bairns, until they come to this verse, and then, from one end of America to the other, where the Anglo-Saxon race predominates, they sing—
Red is for the firemen,
For firemen, for firemen;
Red is for the firemen,
And that will never do.
But to return to our counting-out games, some of which, by-the-way, originally were curses and anathemas, but as now sung by our children the original is lost in a meaningless jargon, often being devoid of rhyme, but always possessing rhythm. Many such are undoubtedly little else than so much gibberish, but in a few cases the rhythm is hoary with age, and possibly in the long past was listened to with awe and trembling. A very old and widely spread counting-out rhyme runs as follows:—
Eary, ory, hickory, on,
Philson, Valson, Dickson, John,
Squeaby, Squaby, Irishman,