Cinderella dressed in yella...

Last night, both Chris and I were having trouble falling asleep (him, because it was the end of his weekend and he'd slept in yesterday morning; me, because it was 9pm, for crying out loud), which led to what we will claim were the Funniest and Most Insightful Nighttime Conversations of All Time. As all nighttime conversations are.

We suddenly realised that we both still remembered all the words to the schoolyard clapping game "Miss Mary had a Steamboat." And "Miss Mary Mac." And parts of that one that had the cool arm thing you did when you sang "down by the rollercoaster." Which led into the realisation that we learned these games from other kids our age (and perhaps in the grade just above us); neither of us learned them from our parents, or from our teachers. These songs are obviously older than our parents' generation ("hello, operator, please get me number 9..."), and although they seem to be passed on from child to child orally, they really don't evolve a lot. Chris and I knew the songs nearly the same (he said "Miss Sally" instead of "Miss Mary," and yet we each knew remarkably similar versions of the song). I remember us kids being really excited when some of the Cosby kids did "Miss Mary Mac" on an episode. They did it exactly the same as we did (same song, same words, same hands-crossed motion), but that didn't seem strange to us: it was how the song was sung. Never mind who taught it to whom, and who even wrote that song and made up those hand actions in the first place.

Anyone have any insights into childhood culture (or whether kids still sing these songs)? Or the origins?

Updated: I've been doing some quick internet searching, and apparently people study these sorts of things as children's folklore.