Children’s Folklore Recent Titles in Greenwood Folklore Handbooks Myth: a handbook

When You Get Married
When you get married
And your old man gets cross,
Just pick up the broom
And show him who’s boss.
When you get married
And have squalling brats,
Just cut off their heads
And feed’em to the cats.
Life is like a rose,
Love is like a blossom.
If you want your finger bit,
Stick it at a possum.
These delightful autograph rhymes come from Vance Randolph and May Kennedy 
McCord’s 1948 essay “Autograph Albums in the Ozarks” (182–93), which analyzes 
album entries from the late 1800s to the late 1940s in Missouri and Arkansas. Like 
many other autograph rhymes, these three give the book’s owner advice for the fu-
ture. The first two rhymes’ messages seem facetious, but their focus on independence 
from husbands and children has a feminist orientation. The third rhyme effectively 
deflates the sentimentality favored by autograph rhyme writers of that period.
If All the Boys . . .
If all the boys
Lived across the sea,
Oh, what a swimmer
Libby would be!

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62 Children’s 
Folklore
When you get old
And think you’re sweet,
Pull off your shoes
And smell your feet.
Two sixth-grade classmates wrote these rhymes in my autograph book in the 
spring of 1960 at John Eaton Elementary School in Washington, D.C. Sixth-
graders, on the cusp of adolescence, wonder and worry about future social 
relationships. Autograph rhymes like these remind children not to take them-
selves too seriously. They also provoke laughter at a time of transition, when 
social relationships can seem complex and intimidating. For more examples of 
autograph rhymes, see Bronner (89–90).
Bad Future, Bad Luck
Calling car one, calling car two,
A pig named Sally escaped from the zoo!
God made the rivers, God made the lakes,
But when He made you He made a big MISTAKE!
Remember the trees and remember the grass,
Remember the days I kicked your ass!
Hope you have a bad future and bad luck in all you do.
Your favorite sister, Mei Mei
Susan Yee, a Chinese American student at Binghamton University, copied these 
verses from her sister Sally’s autograph book in New York City in May 1980. Mei 
Mei, their youngest sister, had written these mocking verses in 1975, when she 
was 10. Sally considered Mei-Mei’s verses to be among the best in her autograph 
book, because they made her friends laugh.