"Round and round the garden" is an English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

 typically accompanied by a fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 number of 19235.

Lyrics

The most common modern form of the poem is:

Round and round the garden

Like a teddy bear

Teddy bear

The teddy bear is a stuffed toy bear. They are usually stuffed with soft, white cotton and have smooth and soft fur. It is an enduring form of a stuffed animal in many countries, often serving the purpose of entertaining children. In recent times, some teddy bears have become collector's items...

.

One step, two step,

Tickle you under there.

Origins

The rhyme was first collected in Britain in the late 1940s. Since Teddy Bears did not come into vogue until the twentieth century it is unlikely to be any older than that in its current form, but Iona and Peter Opie speculated that it might be a version of an older rhyme, 'Round about there, went a little hare'.


LYRICS:

"Round about there
went a little hare.
A cat came and chased him,
right about there."

Accompanying actions

The nursery rhyme is accompanied by various actions. The adult first lightly strokes his or her index finger in slow circles around the child's upturned palm, then with each "step", walks their index and middle finger up the child's arm, firstly to the elbow and then to the shoulder. Finally after a short pause before the "tickle", the adult launches a (not unexpected) tickle

Tickling

Tickling is the act of touching a part of the body so as to cause involuntary twitching movements and/or laughter. The word evolved from the Middle English tikelen, perhaps frequentative of ticken, to touch lightly. The idiom tickled pink means to be pleased or delighted.In 1897, psychologists G...

 under the arm.

External links

• Communication, language and literacy: Round and round the garden from The National Strategies
  The National Strategies
  The National Strategies are professional programmes for school children and young people in England, delivered on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families...
  
  website