Review of Doh Ray Me, When Ah Wis Wee

During the first half of last century, apparently, with other conflicts higher in the collective consciousness, people stopped talking about the Boer War (pronounced boo-er) and began to talk of the Boer War (pronounced boar). In an unlikely turn of events, this situation had a dramatic effect on the song we all know as 'Auntie Mary Had a Canary'!

The story of this comic, sometimes bawdy little song, as much of as can be gathered in hindsight, is told at some length in Ewan McVicar's entertaining book Doh Ray Me, When Ah Wis Wee, a recent book from Birlinn. In many earlier versions of the song, the bird in question 'sang for oors and frightened the Boers', but without the rhyme, the song began to mutate further and all sorts of things began to appear from the aunt's drawers including, often, Santa Claus.

These drawers, it seems, are an interloper from another ditty sung by adults to the same tune. So indeed is Auntie Mary – the original canary seems to have been owned by Barnum and Bayley and though we may never know, it is possible that this song about overstuffed underwear, beloved of many generations of children, originally recorded some feat of bravery in the Boer War. It was a favourite of the Queen Mother, who taught it to Prince Charles who has it as his party piece according to McVicar.

Doh Ray Me... sets out to do for Scottish children's songs and rhymes what the Opies did in their marvellous 1950s study The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren. Writing back then, Iona Opie suggested that new games and entertainment might put a stop to playground song and lore – but it was still going strong when she penned The People in the Playground (a favourite book of mine, not least for Opie's sometimes tart, sometimes poetic commentary) 25 years later. Another 25 years has passed since then and, as McVicar shows, the songs are still vibrant, still changing, still a crucial weapon in the playground arsenal.

In the early 90s, McVicar set out to tell some Glasgow children about songs and rhymes of yore, only to find that the children knew many of them, or variants thereon, and there were many modern equivalents. 'We sing songs like that,' a child ventured, and so McVicar began to collect, careful not to censor, as many collectors had before, the more ribald verses and the more aggressive ones favoured by small boys.

These songs are more the preserve of girls though – aged between seven and twelve. The games they often accompany may change (skipping, clapping, ball bouncing, Chinese ropes) but the songs can be adapted endlessly, with a mix of popular culture (Tarzan, Popeye and Mickey Mouse are perennial favourites) and songs learned through generations happily clashing (in one memorable verse recorded by McVicar a decade back, children's puppets Rosie and Jim give birth to Eric Cantona after a coupling in a biscuit tin!)

The book is divided into categories by type (such as counting songs) or theme (animals, confrontation). Many rhymes will be instantly recognisable by their opening lines ('Not last night but the night before', 'One two three a leerie', 'Skinny malinky longlegs'). However, what follows is likely to be different, playground to playground, town to town, generation to generation. Along the way, there are some personal recollections, some nice illustrations and photographs, some historical background and McVicar ends with an interesting essay about the history of recording and preserving such lore from the early Victorian period onwards. This is an excellent addition to Scotland's social history library.