“Quack Diddly Oso” Clapping Hand Game
Informant Data:
Julia Stevenson was born on March 22nd of 1996 on the Upper West Side of New York City. She moved to Westchester County at a very young age where she grew up with her younger sister. Both her and her sister were avid readers from a young age and enjoyed going to the library together. Julia also loved to play badminton, Wiffle ball, as well as make-believe games after school with her neighbors and cousins. She also holds fond memories of the summers she spent as a child on Cape Cod with her extended family and the camping trips she took with her mom at the end of each summer. As a child, Julia also received intensive training in ballet and was featured in New York City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker for several years.Julia attended Hackley, a private school in Tarrytown, from kindergarten through the 12th grade. She is currently a pre-med student at Dartmouth College where she runs for the Cross Country team.
Contextual Data:
I spoke with Julia on May 8th of 2018 in a residential hall at Dartmouth College. She shared this story as part of a Folklore collection for Russian 13.As Julia recounted all the games she used to play with her neighbors and cousins growing up after school and over the summer in Cape Cod, she emphasized rhyming and clapping hand games in particular. She started playing hand games when she was in elementary school when she and her friends were bored during recess. While she does not remember from whom specifically she first learned these hand games, she believes they might have been introduced and passed down by her teachers and her peers’ older siblings. When asked to recall a specific rhyming hand game that she played a lot, and she responded with “Quack Diddly Oso”—which was her favorite one. This specific hand game has aspects of both verbal lore and customary lore (as it served a specific function for Julia and the children she played it with). Julia reported that they would play this game a lot in order pick a person to be “it” for hide-and-seek or to assign teams for bigger games. Once Julia learned “Quack Diddly Oso” at school, she taught her younger sister and her cousins to play over the summer in Cape Cod, which is where she remembers playing it the most. She and her cousins would usually play together before a big game of hide-and-seek, and they would all stand in a large circle with overlapping hands and pass the clap around while they sang the song that goes along with the game.Julia also noted that often times some of her younger cousins would get upset when they played the game, either because they did not know the rhyme or because they felt left out once they were eliminated from the game.
Item:
“Quack Diddly Oso”can be played with at least two people, although it is usually played with a group of at least three to four children who stand in a circle with their right hand on top of the left hand of the person their right.As the rhyming song that accompanies the game is chanted, the participants proceed around the circle clockwise clapping the hand of the person to their left with their right hand. They pass the clap around in the circle to the beat of rhyme and eliminate one person with every round.The cycle continues until the song ends, and if at this particular point a person’s hand is slapped, they are considered “out” and they then must stand or sit in the center of the circle, or leave the circle and watch from the edges. However, if the player pulls his or her hand away quickly enough and avoids being slapped, the person who attempted to slap their hand is eliminated instead. The rhyme that the informant played with goes as follows:
“Quack diddly oso quack quack quack, Señorita, your mama smells like pizza, so give it to your teacher, Dolora, Dolora, I’ll meet you at the door-a with a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10…”
Collector’s Comments:
I also grew up playing “Quack Diddly Oso” during recess with my friends, however I played a slightly different version of the game. The rhyme that I played with started in the same way but included different words after the initial “Quack diddly oso quack quack quack” line. I think that rhyming hand games speak to the complicated nature of childlore. Many of these games are at once a shared staple of American culture—many with the same name are played by kids all over the country—yet the rhyming songs that accompany them can vary dramatically depending on region and specific place, and in that way they can also be quite localized and unique. Nonetheless, the widespread popularity of rhyming hand games as a form of entertainment for children is hardly surprising given their simplicity and convenience. All that these games require are the participants’ hands, and thus they can be played almost anywhere. Lastly, Julia’s comments on the younger children feeling left out resonated with me in particular. I distinctly remember that once rhyming and clapping hand games started to become wildly popular at my elementary school, the kids who were left out of games from the start or became eliminated early on would often become very upset—so much so that sometimes teachers had to get involved.
Collector’s Name: Ella Ketchum ‘21
Not how we sing it in school we sing it
Quack diddly oso quack quack quack señorita your mother smell like pizza so give it to your teacher fellow fellow fellow fellow fellow hit it 12345678910
Same here… in 2002
Same in the late 1990s, in NYC, though we didn’t have the line about the teacher and the words were ever so slightly different. It went:
quackadillioso quack quack quack señorita your mother smells like pizza aurora aurora we’ll kick you out the door-a with a 1… 2… 3… etc etc
So interesting! My memory of this
is from (circa)1992 Seattle, WA
Quack dillioso, quack-quack-quack
Sam or Rico, Rico-Rico-Rico
Flora, Flora, Flora-Flora-Flora
Fa-lor…1–2–3 …(4)
We still play this same version! (Bainbridge island around 2012)
Mine is quite similar to yours, and it would have been around ’91 or ’92 in St. Louis, MO.
Quack diddly oso, quack-quack-quack
Tally rico, rico-rico-rico
Feloise, feloise, feloise-feloise-feloise
Fe-LOISE Bing bang boom
Johnny, thats the way we sing it too!
Seattle, 2015
Same lyrics except “sing of Sam or Rico, Rico Rico Rico”
And fa-lor was dropped in the last line
Wow same! Olympia WA
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Very interesting! The variant I grew up with in Virginia in the 2000s was:
“Quack dillioso, quack quak quack
Señorita, rita rita rita
Below, below
Stick your nose in cheerios
And a 1,2, 3, 4… (10)”
Quack Diddly Oso
Quak Quak Quak
From Sandiago
Ago Ago Ago
Tiddly ora tiddly ora
ill kick you out the dora singing
ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN
ah!! Probably around 2004-2007 on Long Island…
Quack diddly oso, quack quack quack from San Diego, ego ego waffle galore, galore potatoes on the floor, galore 123456….
In my school Quack diddly oso went..
Quack diddly oso quack quack quack hey chica chica, chica chica chica, follow! Follow! Stick your butt in jello baby! 1 2 3 4 open up the candy store 5 6 7 8 you look good and I look great 9 10 11 12 put the candy on the shelf!
(In Rochester NY)
I used to play this when I was younger too,
but we sang it as
Quack dilly oso, quack quack quack,
sing, Sam or Rico, Rico-Rico-Rico
Flora, flora, flora-flora flora!
1 2 3 4
BRONX NY 1990s:
QUACK DIDDLY OSO QUACK QUACK QUACK HIT IT
SENORITA, YOUR MOTHER SMELLS LIKE PIZZA
FELLOW
FELLOW
FELLOW
FELLOW
FELLOW
NOW 12345678910
Out of nowhere, I was just reminded of waiting for the camp bus on West 88th Street off Broadway, Manhattan, in 1999, and got Quack Diddly Oso stuck in my head. I couldn’t remember some of the words. Web search led me here. And here I found that the words differ from place to place, but many people played the game and share the memory :). Wholesome.
I learned (Illinois, 2023):
Slap-dillioso, slap slap slap say
Tal-orico, rico rico ri-co
Flow, flow, flow flow flow say
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
i used to play this back in day camp w my friends in the late 2000´s but ours was a bit different. it went like this:
quack diddly ack goes quack quack quack
señorita rita rita rita
potatoes potatoes
potatoes on the kitchen floor 1234 (at 4 you would try to slap the hand of the person next to you so they’d be out)
Me and my friends always sang it
Quack dillo oh my quack, quack, quack, hey chicka, chicka, chicka, chicka chicka Chex, say hello, fello, stick your hand in yellow, jello, 1 2 3 4 open up the candy store 5 6 7 8 you look good but I look great 9 10 11 12 put the candy on the shelf