Uncle Billy lost his willy

[ThreeLocusts]

Jingle bells, Batman smells/Robin flew away/uncle Billy lost his willy/on the motorway...
(sung to the tune of the Xmas song)

it's one of a handful of rude rhymes my children learned early on in primary school. This was in the Southeast in the 2010s, but a friend who grew up in Manchester in the 1970s said he knew this rhyme too.

I'd just like to get a sense of how widespread and how old it is. Has it been around since the first Batman TV series of the late 50s (I think)? And do you have other examples of disrespectful children's rhymes featuring pop cultural references? Or rude rhymes full stop? I find this one oddly joyful....

SinisterBumFacedCat · Today 00:58

Willy was a watchdog
lying in the grass
Along came a bumblebee
and stung him up the…

We had

Willy was a watchdog
lying in the grass
Along came a bumblebee
and stung him on the leg.

and:

An angry young sailor stood on the dock
Shouting and waving his big hairy fist.

I thought this was going to be another trans thread from the title.

WW2-themed counting-out rhyme I recall:

There's a German in the grass, grass, grass
With a bullet up his arse, arse, are
Pull it out, pull it out
Good Boy Scout
And you are not it.

Yes, that one, and another that went:

Build a bonfire, build a bonfire,
Put the teachers on the top.
Put the prefects and the textbooks
And burn the bloody lot!

(Yes, I know, we were charming little souls!)

I'm from Manchester, born in 86.I remember it fron primary school

My grandchildren get a very close version of the second one on the phone every birthday from me!

Happy birthday to you
Squashed tomatoes and stew
I saw a fat monkey
And I knew it was you!

I went on a pro refugee march in London a few years ago and people were chanting this but about the Tories 😂
Build a bonfire build a bonfire
Put some Tories on the top
Put more Tories in the middle
And then burn the fucking lot
😬

Aww thanks, exactly!

A few concluding thoughts as this thread goes dormant (I was pleased to see it had crept onto p. 27 overnight):

good point made above about the importance of family gatherings/cousins/UK holidays for enabling the remarkable homogeneity of some of these rhymes in the pre-internet age. Interesting questions which ones caught on and which didn't or why - there were some excellent transgressive rhymes that only one person mentioned.

For the rhymes with less 'fart/boob/undie' (which seems to cut across age groups) and more sexual (teenage-relevant) content: I think my children learned those young from classmates with older siblings. Probably another important line of transmission.

The sexual rhymes remind me vaguely of initiation songs I worked with a long time ago - used by societies that didn't use to have schools to teach girls about intercourse and its consequences.

And: am I alone in finding the rhymes about eating bodily effluvia, about singing scabs and similar more viscerally skin-crawling than any amount of mention of willies and shagging? Not sure how that works.

Thanks all!

I didn’t actually sing the first verse but a record of children’s songs we got out of the library in the mid seventies included:

Come to my school! Come to my school
It’s a life of misery
There’s a sign around the corner saying welcome unto thee
Don’t believe it! Don’t believe it! It’s a pack of bloody lies!

(…) ?

Build a bonfire! Build a bonfire!
Put the heedie on the top
Put the teachers round the middle
and burn the bloody lot.

So that must be a Scottish version. At my school we sang the head teachers name instead of ‘the heedie’.

I’d heard the song on the record quite a while before anyone at school started singing it.

No you’re not alone @ThreeLocusts

Uncle Fester drove his Vespa down the motorway here.

@ToWhitToWhoo I remember the Mary had a little lamb one beginning:

Sinbad was a sailor/His father was one too/Sinbad went to heaven/His father went to/Big Black castle standing on a rock/If you want to get there you got to show your/ cocktail ginger ale 4 and and 6 a glass

Then the Mary had a little lamb bit followed by Ask no questions/tell no lies that's how Sinbad got to paradise

Don't remember the second line of the Batman one though

(Central Scotland, 80s primary school)

The sinbad one sounds like it could have been a version of one we had:

Suzie had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell
the steamboat went to heaven, and suzie went to..

Hell-o operator,
please give me number nine,
and if you disconnect me,
I’ll kick you from …

Behind the refrigerator
there was a piece of glass
Suzie fell upon it
and cut her little…

Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
zipping up their…

Flies are in the meadow,
The bees are in the park
Miss Suzie and her boyfriend
are kissing in the dark.

Fanny Morgan plays the organ
and she plays it very well
but her sister’s got a blister
right between her
Fanny Morgan plays the organ

heard in Cumbria early eighties.

Geordie girls was the version I knew at primary school. I remember our Year 6 teacher walking in on a few of the girls singing it - she didn’t seem that bothered from what I remember but some of the parents didn’t think it was an appropriate song for Year 6.

It’s more widely known than you’d think! We sang it in London (00s) but with “Jersey girls” instead. Don’t know why it was Jersey!

Same, Dublin 1970s.

Happy Birthday to you
You were born in the zoo
You look like a monkey
And you smell like one too

Any one remember

The quartermasters stores?

I can't remember all of the lyrics ...

There was Bob Bob playing with his knob
In the stores
In the stores
There was Bob Bob playing with his knob
In the quartermaster's stores ( behind the doors)
My eyes are dim I cannot see
I haven't got my specs with me
I haven't got my specs with me

I think

ColinRobinsonsFart · Today 20:44

The quartermasters stores?

Yes!

There was rats, rats,
Rats as big as big as cats,
In the stores, in the stores,
In the Quartermasters stores....

And something about: The officer were on parade, parlez vous and a fart rolling down the hill.

Yes! I remember this from spending a few months in Edmonton, Canada in the 1970s. We thought it was 'the corner master store'.

Dogs
Dogs
Wearing rubber clogs
At the corner master store.
Dogs
Dogs
Wearing rubber clogs
At the corner master store.

My eyes are dim; I cannot see,
I did not bring my specs with me,
I did not bring my specs with me,

Cats
Cats
Wearing rubber hats
At the corner master store.
Cats
Cats
Wearing rubber hats
At the corner master store.

My eyes are dim; I cannot see,
I did not bring my specs with me,
I did not bring my specs with me,

Kittens
Kittens
Wearing rubber mittens
At the corner master store.
Kittens
Kittens
Wearing rubber mittens
At the corner master store.

My eyes are dim; I cannot see,
I did not bring my specs with me,
I did not bring my specs with me,

(I think the 'kittens' verse might have been made up and added by my friend and myself,)

The parlez vous one I know was

"There was an old woman at 92 parlez vous
There was an old woman at 92 parlez vous
There was an old woman at 92
Done a fart and missed the loo
Inky pinky parlez vous -ous-ous

The fart went rolling down the street parlez vous
The fart went rolling down the street parlez vous
The fart went rolling down the street
Knocked a copper off his feet
Inky pinky parlez vous -ous-ous

Then it went on for about 8 more verses. Nothing about officers on parade though. The last verse was about a Roman emperor.

The Parlez vous song I’ve heard variations on that one, too
It's a famous WW1 song

“Mademoiselle from
Armentieres? “

Something similar to that anyway.

No one going to mention....

Friggin' in the riggin'?

It was a song by the sex pistols but we loved to sing it very very loudly....