Folk Song/Game

Nationality: Caucasian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

“Quack diddly o-so quack quack quack,

sing it, sam-a  rico, rico rico rico

fa-lor-a fa-lor-a, fa-lor fa-lor fa-lor

FA-LOR

One! Two! Three! Four!”

Everyone sits in a circle with their hands held out two their sides, with their right had atop the left palm of the person sitting to their right. One person in the circle starts, and with their right had, claps the open palm of the person to their left.  The claps continue to go around the circle until the song is over.  On “Four!” the object is to avoid being clapped.  The person who is about to be clapped must aniticipate this and move their palm away, while the person who is doing the clapping will try and be as fast as possible to hit their hand before they move it away.  Whoever fails, moves into the center of the circle—this is called “going into the pot”—where they simply start up another mini circle and play simultaneously with the larger circle.

With two people, each person faces each other, each curling their right had into that of the other to make a joint fist.  Each person holds there free left hand about eight inches away from their joint fist, and together alternate clapping the fist against each of their free hands.  The escaping on the last count still applies.

This is a hand game played with anywhere between two or more people.  The informant learned and played this game most frequently when she was a girl scout, but being so catchy it quickly transcended her elementary school