Skip To My Lou
Old Time Tales of Warren County

Skip To My Lou

"I never danced," said Mrs. Hannah Sanford. "My father didn't like to have me dance, and I never did anything my father didn't want me to do." The reply of Mrs. Sanford, ninety-one years of age, when asked about the old-time dances, is like that of many others who can look back on a long life spent in Warren County. John Logan, ninety-seven years of age and the oldest man in the county at the time this is written, never danced either. Dozens of other men and women who can look back on lives reaching ninety years back, never indulged in dancing, they were strictly raised in the church, when that religious organization looked on the dance and most of its concomitants with a forbidding frown.

The fiddle was an instrument of the devil, the dance was a lure to catch the unwary, a paper bound copy of "From The Ball Room To Hell" lay on the parlor table, this of course at a later date, some fifty years ago.

But youth must be served and it is not to be supposed the rigidly raised young people of Warren County sat down and folded their hands, when those useful hands were not busy chopping wood, churning butter, knitting socks or sewing a seam. The sons and daughters of the pioneers were full of the spirit of their fathers and mothers. Plain food and good habits built powerful, sinewy bodies for the boys, to the girls they gave rosy cheeks, bright eyes and a deal of life and vigor. If they could not dance, these eager, clean young folk were going to find some other outlet for their irrepressible good feelings. And so, when they met together on social occasions, they played games that were something like dancing. If the preacher was at the party, this awkward situation quite frequently occurred, he might or might not countenance these games. But the broader gentlemen of the cloth, particularly after a bountiful dinner of roast venison, partridge, or perhaps turkey with plenty of rich pumpkin pie and cake flavored and iced with maple sugar, were sometimes known to relent and actually countenance, or at least tolerate, the playing of the greatest of all singing games of the Pennsylvania pioneers, a game still played at country parties in Warren County-"Skip To My Lou."

No collection of sketches of early days in this region would be complete without mention of the game Skip To My Lou; it was played in the log cabins of settlers as far back as 1830, and probably before that. Generation has passed it on to generation, this rather plaintive, monotonous, hypnotic song of Skip To My Lou, which is accompanied by a dancing or skipping back and forth of changing partners.

Nor is Skip To My Lou at all confined to this region, it has been played for long years in many sections of the United States. Out in the Pigeon Creek region of Indiana, a lanky seventeen year old boy by the name of Abraham Lincoln played Skip To My Lou the winter of 1826, singing some of the same verses sung to it in Warren County. Horace Greeley knew the words of the song and once wrote a piece about it.

Skip To My Lou could best be played by groups of twelve to twenty. When people gathered in larger numbers the young folks were divided into "sets" for the playing of the game, each set a separate game in itself. Chords played on a melodeon or, later, on an organ, heightened the rhythm of the song, but Skip To My Lou was played at countless Warren County parties without any instrumental accompaniment, the singing alone furnishing inspiration for the players. To play this classic singing game whose unforgettable rhythms have enlivened the feet of generations for more than one hundred years, the players stood in two lines facing each other. The couples were evenly divided, boy and girl, with one extra lad in the lines. The singing started, usually with the most popular verse of the song, "Little red wagon, painted blue." The same line was repeated three times, then,-"Skip To My Lou My Darling."

Verse after verse would be sung, usually with some leader who would introduce the chorus as he saw fit. The game consisted in the continual exchange of partners, a girl leaving one partner at another's invitation, in the manner of the tag dance. Usually the game warmed up slowly, the singing growing stronger and stronger as the evening progressed. Changing of partners would be slow at first, a lot of verses sung, the two lines standing there, clapping hands in time with the song.

The extra boy, he was often a middle aged man, was of course always without a partner. And each in time was left without a partner. A very popular or pretty girl would be everlastingly chosen, everlastingly skipping across from one line to another, with the new partner who had chosen her by skipping across and taking her hand. And the swinging, monotonic song would go on and on and on, unceasing, unvarying when new couples joined the play or others tired and sat down. Scores of verses were sung to the tune of Skip To My Lou. Some verses were confined to certain small localities. The boys and girls up Sugar Run had lines never sung on Davy Hall. In the neighborhood of Tidioute there was a verse, "Mule in the cellar, kicking up through,-", it seems to have been sung nowhere else in Warren County. The hold this simple, singing game, took on those who played it, could hardly be imagined or understood by one who had not seen Skip To My Lou played, heard the hypnotic, compelling song that accompanies it. Games started early in the evening, often went on till two and three in the morning. Players would stand in line clapping their hands in time with the singing, clapping, singing sometimes with their eyes shut from sheer weariness. Yet they would go on and on; when a good game of Skip To My Lou got started the players never knew when to quit.

Little red wagon painted blue, Little red wagon painted blue, Little red wagon painted blue, Skip to my Lou my darling.

Perhaps a dozen repetitions of this one verse, then,

Rats in the buttermilk two by two, Rats in the buttermilk two by two, Rats in the buttermilk two by two, Skip to my Lou my darling.

The indifference of youths who felt they were going to lose a pretty partner was voiced by

I'll git another one if you do, I'll git another one if you do, I'll git another one if you do, Skip to my Lou my darling.

Rosy cheeked Mamie McGuire would be chosen by Dick Woodin and skipped across to stand by his side leaving a deserted partner who was heartened by the not over chivalrous verse,

Gone again and I don't care, Gone again and I don't care, Gone again and I don't care, Skip to my Lou my darling.

And then the verses went on and on, one perhaps repeated a score of times till the high pitched leader would change to another.

Here comes John with his big boots on, Here comes John with his big boots on, Here comes John with his big boots on, Skip to my Lou my darling.

Pretty as a red bird, prettier too, Pretty as a red bird, prettier too, Pretty as a red bird, prettier too, Skip to my Lou my darling.

Cows in the corn field, shoo, shoo, shoo, Cows in the corn field, shoo, shoo, shoo, Cows in the corn field, shoo, shoo, shoo, Skip to my Lou my darling.

There were verses crude enough that came out of the logging camps and settlements where members were not of the best. Such as

Take and go, you old fool you, Take and go, you old fool you, Take and go, you old fool you, Skip to my Lou my darling.

And verse after verse of simple repetition of the lines

Skip, skip, skip to my Lou, Skip, skip, skip to my Lou, Skip, skip, skip to my Lou, Skip to my Lou my darling.

At many and many an old time party the game of Skip to my Lou has been played all night, kept going till dawn came creeping over the Warren County hills. Its strange rhythms beat through the youth memories of many an aged man and woman today. A simple, monotonous yet strangly alluring game, it lived through the ox-bow and candle-dipping days, through the days of the moulded candle and into innumerable nights illuminated by the oil lamp. It must have voiced a heart hunger of youth whose social pleasures were prized because they were few. Skip to my Lou, it's rhythmic beat and continuous repetition is reminiscent of the Indian dances done by Senecas and Iroquois among the vanished forests of Warren County in centuries that faded with the coming of the white man. Skip, skip, skip to my Lou, the simplest of homely singing games with only the song and a continual change of partners to give it zest, yet through the many verses of the song is woven the magic skein of romance of early loves and courtships that ended in happy marriage. For more than one rose-cheeked Warren County girl skipped to her husband in the classic game of Skip To My Lou.

SOURCE:  Page(s) 309-314: Old Time Tales of Warren County; Meadville, Pa.: Press of Tribune Pub. Co., 1932