Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts explained

The song "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts" is a children's public domain playground song popular throughout the United States. Dating back to at least the mid-20th century, the song is sung to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare".^[1] The song, especially popular in school lunchrooms and at summer camps, presents macabre horrors through cheerful comedy while allowing children to explore taboo images and words especially as they relate to standards of cleanliness and dining.^{[2] [3]} Many local and regional variations of the lyrics exist, but whatever variant, they always entail extensive use of the literary phonetic device known as an alliteration which helps to provide an amusing description of animal body parts and fluids not normally consumed by Americans.

A recording of the song by Mika Seeger was included in a 1959 Folkways release entitled The Sounds of Camp,^[4] as a short track titled "Jingle" in the digital version.^[5] This recording was rereleased on a 1990 Smithsonian Folkways compilation titled A Fish That's a Song, a collection of traditional public domain children's songs from the United States, with liner notes that include the lyrics:

Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,Mutilated monkey meat.Dirty little birdie feet.French fried eyeballs rolling down a dirty street,And me without my spoon.^[6]

See also

• Children's street culture
• Dead Skunk

Further reading

• Josepha Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf, Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood (August House, 1995).
• Pifer, Lynn."Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood." review of book by Sherman and Weisskopf). Journal of American Folklore. Washington: Winter 1997.Vol.110, Iss. 435; pg. 105
• del Negro, Janice. "Professional reading—Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood by Josepha Sherman and T. K. F. Weiskopt." book review in The Booklist. Chicago: April 15, 1996.Vol.92, Iss. 16; pg. 1448
• Ian Turner, June Factor, Wendy Lowenstein, Cinderella Dressed in Yella, 2nd Edition (Heinemann, 1978).

Notes and References

1. Lansky, Bruce and Stephen Carpenter, I've Been Burping in the Classroom, p 10. Meadowbrook, 2007.
2. Westfahl, Gary, et al, Foods of the Gods: Eating and the Eaten in Fantasy and Science Fiction, p 79. University of Georgia Press, 1996.
3. Bronner, Simon J., American Children's Folklore, pp 81-82. August House, 2006.
4. Web site: The Sounds of Camp (Booklet notes to the 1959 Smithsonian Folkways recording) . 2020-08-02 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200723131908/https://folkways-media.si.edu/liner_notes/folkways/FW06105.pdf . July 23, 2020.
5. Web site: Jingle, From Sounds of Camp: A Documentary Study of a Children's Camp . 2020-12-07.
6. Web site: Booklet notes to the 1990 Smithsonian Folkways recording . 2006-11-27 . bot: unknown . https://web.archive.org/web/20140221062348/http://media.smithsonianglobalsound.org/liner_notes/smithsonian_folkways/SFW45037.pdf . February 21, 2014 .