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"One, Two, Three, Four, Five" (also known as "1, 2, 3, 4, 5" or "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive" in other versions) is a
One, two, three, four, five,
Once I caught a fish alive.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Then I let it go again.
Why did you let it go?
Because he bit my finger so.
Which finger did it bite?
This little finger on my right.
"One, Two, Three, Four, Five" is one of many counting-out rhymes. It was first recorded in ''
nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
Fr ...
and counting-out rhyme
A counting-out game or counting-out rhyme is a simple method of 'randomly' selecting a person from a group, often used by children for the purpose of playing another game. It usually requires no materials, and is achieved with spoken words or hand ...
.
It has a Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadsid ...
number of 13530.
Text and melody
A common modern version is:Origin
"One, Two, Three, Four, Five" is one of many counting-out rhymes. It was first recorded in ''Mother Goose's Melody
Mother Goose is a character that originated in children's fiction, as the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. She also appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as ...
'' around 1765. Like most versions until the late 19th century, it had only the first stanza and dealt with a hare, not a fish:
:One, two, three,
:Four and five,
:I caught a hare alive;
:Six, seven, eight,
:Nine and ten,
:I let him go again.
The modern version is derived from three variations collected by Henry Bolton in the 1880s from America.
See also
*List of nursery rhymes
A list is a Set (mathematics), set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of t ...
Notes
{{reflist Counting-out rhymes English nursery rhymes English folk songs Songs about fish Songs about fishermen