Mary Mack

"Mary Mack", also known as "Miss Mary Mack", is a clapping game of unknown origin. It is well known in various parts of the United States, Australia, Canada, and in New Zealand and has been called "the most common hand-clapping game in the English-speaking world".

Description

In the game, two children stand or sit opposite to each other, and clap hands according to the rhyming song. In some places, the repeated notes are given a quarter note triplet rhythmic value or sounded early to syncopate the rhythm.
The same song is also used as a skipping-rope rhyme.

History

An early version of a verse of "Mary Mack" collected in West Chester, Pennsylvania appears in the book The Counting Out Rhymes of Children by Henry Carrington Bolton.
Other early sources show variations of "She asked her mother for fifty cents to see the elephant jump the fence" with no mention of Mary Mack.
The origin of the name Mary Mack is obscure, and various theories have been proposed. One theory is that Miss Mary Mack was a performer in Ephraim Williams’s circus in the 1880s; the song may be reference to her and the elephants in the show. According to another theory, Mary Mack originally referred to the USS Merrimack, an American warship of the mid-1800s named after the Merrimack River, that would have been black, with silvery rivets.

Rhyme

Various versions of the song exist; a common version goes:
Alternate versions use "15 cents", "never came down" and end with repeating "July, July, July".
An alternate version, sung in Canada and England, includes the words:
An alternate version, sung in the American South:
The first three lines above are stated in one source to be a riddle with the answer "coffin".

Clap

A common version of the accompanying clap is as follows:

Pat arms across chest: Arms across chest
Pat thighs: Pat thighs
Clap hands: Clap hands
Clap right hands together: Clap right palms with partner
Clap left hands together: Clap left palms with partner
Clap both hand together
Clap both palms with partner