Skip to My Lou

Common card · No. 301067

"Skip to My (The) Lou" (Roud 3433 and 3593) is a popular American folk song and partner-stealing dance from the 1840s. Carl Sandburg, poet and biographer of President Abraham Lincoln, writes that "Skip-to-my-Lou" was a popular party game in Lincoln's youth in southern Indiana, with verses such as "Hurry up slow poke, do oh do", "I'll get her back in spite of you", "Gone again, what shall I do", and "I'll get another girl sweeter than you". John A. and Alan Lomax wrote that "Skip to My Lou" was a simple game of stealing partners (or swapping partners as in square dancing). It begins with any number of couples skipping hand in hand around in a ring. A lone boy in the center of the moving circle of couples sings, "Lost my partner, what'll I do?" as the girls whirl past him. The young man in the center hesitates while he decides which girl to choose, singing, "I'll get another one just like you." When he grasps the hand of his chosen one, the latter's partner moves to the center of the ring...

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