SILLY SONGS FROM A LONG TIME AGO

This one was for skipping rope, the long rope, that is.

                la-mus-ieur-de-mei-sjes-bùkken
                la-mus-ieur-hallee-hallo

on bùkken you had to duck and let the rope pass over your head, and it went on till you tripped up.

And this one is from Germany after the war, WWII that is. At least that is when I heard my cousins sing it for the first time, they had just come out of Germany.

But now I read in Wikipedia that the verse dates back to the Thirty Years' War of the 17th Century, in which Pomerania was pillaged and suffered heavily. Since World War II, it is associated in Germany also with the closing months of that war, when Russian troops advanced into Eastern Germany.

Maikäfer flieg                                                                    Cockchafer fly...

dein Vater ist im Krieg                                                    Your father is at war

deine Mutter ist in Pommerland                                Your mother is in Pomerania

Pommerland ist abgebrannt                                       Pomerania is burned to the ground

Maikäfer flieg                                                                    Cockchafer fly

dein Vater ist im Krieg!                                                  Your father is at war!

Max and Moritz shaking cockchafers from a tree

And the best is that the cockchafer also crops up in Max and Moritz (Wilhelm Busch), the naughty boys who in the end are ground up with the wheat and eaten by the village ducks… good riddance. 

Mind you, that was a children's book to teach the wee ones to behave, or else...