💜✍️NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days – April 2026 – Day 7 – Traditional Rhymes✍️💜

#napowrimo #poetry

Finally, here’s today’s prompt — optional, as always. In her poem, “Front Yard Rhyme,” Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to.

Happy writing!

*I used a poem I had already written and redacted it to fit the prompt.*

TRADITIONAL RHYMES

The big ship sailed through the ally-alley- oh!
*The ally-ally-oh, the ally-ally-oh, the big ship sailed
through the ally-ally-oh on the last day of September.
Two of us made an archway with our arms
And the rest of us filed through singing the song.
The refrain is variously thought to be either
About the Suez or the Manchester Ship Canals
It is said to have been around in the 1930's and
And again in the 1960's where I remember it from.
The ally-ally-oh refers to the Atlantic Ocean.

Another song we sang was *The Clapping Song,”
Written by the American, Lincoln Chase and
Recorded by Shirley Ellis in 1965, it was based on
Another song called “The Rubber Dolly” recorded
By the Light Crust Doughboys in the 1930’s.

The first verse went;
Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine,
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line,
The line broke and the monkey got choked,
And we all went to heaven in a little rowing boat,
Clap-clap, clap-slap, clap your hands.
It was a nonsense song really but we enjoyed
The singing and the actions of the clapping song.

Lady, baby, gypsy, queen, elephant, monkey, tangerine.
Chanted as we played 2 ball against our urban walls.
One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy,
Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.
Sung by the queue waiting our turn in the big skipping rope.
Then there were the rubber bands we fastened together
to make a long one, two children stretched it
around theirs ankles while the rest of us took turns
at jumping in and out, to more songs like:
On a mountain stands a lady,
Who she is I do not know.
All she wants is gold and silver,
All she wants is a nice young beau.

I still hear those songs humming in my head
like busy bees as we played our games with
skipping ropes and rubber balls and bands or without
props at all. Where are they now my
playground pals?
Do their memories match with mine, do they smile
with fondness at a more innocent era long gone by?