WW: Round and Round We Go (Reader Comments and Addenda)
Pierre provides a Russian loop he heard in college:
U popa byla sobaka
On yeyo lyubil.
Ona ukrala kusok sala
On yeyo ubil.
Ubil, zakapal, na kamushkye napisal,
"U popa byla sobaka..."
Pierre's translation:
A priest had a dog
He loved her.
She stole a bit of bacon
He killed her.
Killed, buried, on the stone wrote,
"A priest had a dog..."
I'm intrigued by the similarity of the transliterations of the words for "loved" and "killed"... Though the spellings aren't as similar in Russian.
Aaron heard this loop at Swarthmore:
Rats. I hate rats. Rats make me crazy. I was crazy once. They put me in a room. There were rats in that room. Rats. I hate rats...
He adds, "Imagine several people in a room, all saying it out of sync."
Arthur notes that although he doesn't know the origin of the Hoodoo loop, Cary Grant participates in it in the movie The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer.
(Last updated: 10 February 1999)