Excerpt of Tingalayo
Children’s Folksong
Caribbean
Chorus
Tingalayo,
Come little donkey come.
Tingalayo,
Come little donkey come.
First verse
My donkey walk.
My donkey talk.
My donkey eat
with a knife and fork
(repeat entire verse & then sing chorus)
Second verse
My donkey laugh.
My donkey sing.
My donkey wearin
a diamond ring.
(repeat entire verse & then sing chorus)
Third verse
My donkey eat
My donkey sleep
My donkey kick with his
Two hind feet.
(repeat entire verse & then sing chorus)
With
the possible exception of “Brown Girl In A Ring”, “Tingalayo” may be the
most commonly known Caribbean children’s song among
in the United States. I once
heard a young Caucasian girl singing the tune to herself when I was shopping at
a mall near Pittsburgh, PA. Her
source for the song was probably the popular Caucasian folk singer “Raffi” .
Tingalayo is included in Raffi’s tape (get name of tape.)
This
catchy, easy to learn song is also included in an older folk song book tilted
“Echoes of Africa In Folksongs of the Americas”,2nd edition
(Beatrice Landeck, David McKay Company, New York, 1969, p 83.)
Written as “Tinga layo”, the same verses of the song are also found
in Conolly et. al’s book “Mango Spice” (p. 15).
There
are many different rhyming verses of this song. However, most of the versions include the verse “My donkey
walk, my donkey talk, my donkey eat with a knife and fork”.
It
is interesting to note that Black slave songs used this exact same rhyming
sequence in their tunes about the percussive musical instrument “jawbone”.
Thomas W. Talley’s important collection of African American folk rhymes
from slavery and the early 20th century includes a song called
“Jawbone”. Verse 2 of that song
says “My jawbone walk, my jawbone talk, my jawbone eat with a knife and fork
(Talley, “Negro Folk Rhymes”, Kennikat Press, Port Washington, N.Y, 1968, p
12, originally published by The Macmillan Company, 1922).
The
“jawbone walk” verse was commonly used with other Black slavery dance songs.
A future edition of CocoJams” African American pages will feature all
of the lyrics of “Jawbone“.
Did the Caribbean version of this verse come before
the American version? We may never
know.
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others included in CocoJams by writing to CocoJams This & That.
Some submitted comments will be featured in future CocoJams editions.
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