Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe"—which can be spelled a number of ways—is a children's counting-out rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag, or for selecting various other things. It is one of a large group of similar rhymes in which the child who is pointed to by the chanter on the last syllable is chosen. The rhyme has existed in various forms since well before 1820 and is common in many languages using similar-sounding nonsense syllables. Some versions use a racial epithet, which has made the rhyme controversial at  times. Since many similar counting-out rhymes existed earlier, it is difficult to know its exact origin. Current versions. A common modern version is: The scholars Iona and Peter Opie noted that many variants have been recorded, some with additional words such as "... O. U. T. spells out, And out goes she, In the middle of the deep blue sea" or "My mother told me/says to pick the very best one, and that is Y-O-U/you are [not] it"; while another source cites "Out goes Y-O-U." "Tigger" is also used instead of "tiger" in some  versions of the rhyme. Origins. The first record of a similar rhyme, called the "Hana, man," is from about 1815, when children in New York City are said to have repeated the rhyme: Henry Carrington Bolton discovered this version to be in the US, Ireland and Scotland in the 1880s but was unknown in England until later in the century. Bolton also found a similar rhyme in German: Variations of this rhyme, with the nonsense/counting first line have been collected since the 1820s, such as this one, which includes the 'toe' and 'olla' from Kipling's version: This was  one of many variants of "counting out rhymes" collected by Bolton in 1888. A Cornish version collected in 1882 runs: One theory about the origins of the rhyme is that it is descended from Old English or Welsh counting, similar to the old shepherd's count "Yan Tan Tethera" or the Cornish "Eena, mena, mona, mite". Another possibility is that British colonials returning from India introduced a doggerel version of an Indian children's rhyme used in the game of carom billiards: Another possible origin is from a Swahili poem brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans: "Iino ya mmiini  maiini mo". A possible origin is a centuries-old, possibly Old Saxon, divination rhyme, argued for in 1957 by the Dutch philologists Jan Naarding and Klaas Heeroma of the (Low Saxon Institute) at the University of Groningen. The rhyme was recorded in 1904 by Nynke van Hichtum in Goor in the eastern Netherlands. American and British versions. Some versions of this rhyme used the racial slur "nigger" instead of "tiger". Iona and Peter Opie (1951) quote the following version: This version was similar to that reported by Henry Carrington Bolton as the most common version among American schoolchildren in 1888 . It was used in the chorus of Bert Fitzgibbon's 1906 song "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo": It was also used by Rudyard Kipling in his "A Counting-Out Song", from "Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides", published in 1935. This may have helped popularise this version in the United Kingdom where it seems to have replaced all earlier versions until the late twentieth century. Iona and Peter Opie pointed out in "The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes" (1951) that the word "nigger" was common in American folklore, but unknown in any English traditional rhyme or proverb. This, combined  with evidence of various other versions of the rhyme in the British Isles pre-dating this post-slavery version, would seem to suggest that it originated in North America, although the apparently American word "" was first recorded in written form in England in the 14th century, whereas according to the "Oxford English Dictionary" the words "Niger" or "'nigger" were first recorded in England in the 16th century with their current disparaging meaning. The 'olla' and 'toe' are found as nonsense words in some 19th century versions of the rhyme. Variations. There are considerable variations in the lyrics of the rhyme , including from the early twentieth century in the United States of America: During the Second World War, an AP dispatch from Atlanta, Georgia reported: "Atlanta children were heard reciting this wartime rhyme: A distinct version of the rhyme in the United Kingdom, collected in the 1950s & 1960s, is: In Australia, children sang: From New Zealand: Cultural significance. There are many scenes in books, films, plays, cartoons and video games in which a variant of "Eeny meeny ..." is used by a character who is making a choice, either for serious or comic effect. Notably, the rhyme has been used by killers  to choose victims in the 1994 films "Pulp Fiction" and "Natural Born Killers", the 2003 film "Elephant", and the sixth-season finale of the AMC television series "The Walking Dead". In "Let the Tiger Go", a documentary on tiger conservation released on YouTube in 2017, the poem is read by Alan Rabinowitz in advocacy for ending the poaching of tigers for their body parts. The very title of the documentary is implied to be an allusion to the poem. Music. The vinyl release of Radiohead's album "OK Computer" (1997) uses the words "eeny meeny miny moe" (rather than letter  or numbers) on the labels of Sides A, B, C and D respectively. Eenie Meenie Records is a Los Angeles-based music record label. The names of many songs include some or all of the phrase, including: Literature. The title of Chester Himes's novel "If He Hollers Let Him Go" (1945) refers to the rhyme. Rex Stout wrote a 1962 Nero Wolfe novella titled "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo". In Salman Rushdie's "The Moor's Last Sigh" (1995), the leading character and his three sisters are nicknamed Ina, Minnie, Mynah and Moor. Film and television. In the 1930s, animation  producer Walter Lantz introduced the cartoon characters Meany, Miny, and Moe (later Meeny, Miney and Mo). First appearing in Oswald Rabbit cartoons, then in their own series. The 1933 Looney Tunes cartoon "Bosko's Picture Show" parodies MGM as "TNT pictures", whose logo is a roaring and burping lion with the motto "Eenie Meanie Minie Moe" in the place of MGM's "Ars Gratia Artis". The rhyme appears towards the end of 1949 British black comedy "Kind Hearts and Coronets". The use of the word "nigger" was censored for the American market, being replaced by "sailor". Eeny, meeny, miny, moe