Mary Mack

It is first attested in the book The Counting Out Rhymes of Children by Henry Carrington Bolton (1888), whose version was collected in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

[1] In the game, two children stand or sit opposite to each other, and clap hands according to the rhyming song.

In some places, the repeated notes are given a quarter-note triplet rhythmic value or sounded early to syncopate the rhythm.

Miss Mary Mack was a performer in Ephraim Williams’ circus in the 1880s; the song may be reference to her and the elephants in the show.

[7] According to another theory, Mary Mack originally referred to the USS Merrimack, a United States warship of the mid-1800s named after the Merrimack River, that would have been black, with silvery rivets.