I recently ran across a reference to “buck buck” and was mystified; I asked my wife if she knew the term, and she said “Oh yes, it’s a kids’ game.” So I googled the Wikipedia article and my curiosity was satisfied:
Buck buck (also known as Johnny-on-a-Pony, or Johnny-on-the-Pony) is a children’s game with several variants. One version of the game is played when “one player climbs another’s back” and the climber guesses “the number of certain objects out of sight”. Another version of the game is played with “one group of players [climbing] on the backs of a second group in order to build as large a pile as possible or to cause the supporting players to collapse.”
As early as the 16th century, children in Europe and the Near East played Buck, Buck, which had been called “Bucca Bucca quot sunt hic?” Pieter Bruegel’s painting Children’s Games (1560) depicts children playing a variant of the game.
In the United Kingdom, the game is sometimes called High Cockalorum, but has a large number of different names in various local dialects. These include: “Polly on the Mopstick” in Birmingham, “Strong Horses, Weak Donkeys” in Monmouthshire, “Hunch, Cuddy, Hunch” in west Scotland, “Mont-a-Kitty” in Middlesbrough, “Husky Fusky Finger or Thumb” in Nottinghamshire, “High Jimmy Knacker” in east London, “Jump the Knacker 1-2-3” in Watford, “Wall-e-Acker” or “Warny Echo” in north West London, “Stagger Loney” in Cardiff, “Pomperino” in St Ives, Cornwall and “Trust” in Lancashire. The game is sometimes played in the sergeants’ or officers’ messes of the British Armed Forces.
The article continues with further “national names and variants”; I confess I have my doubts as to whether all of them are actually variants of a single game or whether a bunch of vaguely similar games are being lumped together, but perhaps that’s more of a philosophical issue than a practical one. At any rate, I figure I’m probably not the only person unfamiliar with it, so I’m sharing my discovery here. I’ll add that the OED’s cockalorum entry (revised 2019) defines it first as an interjection “Announcing the climax of a conjuring trick or a sudden transformation. Cf. hi cockalorum int. Now rare,” then as a noun meaning 1 “Self-important behaviour; conceitedness, vanity. Now rare” and “Nonsense, silliness; rubbish” (1936 “Was there ever such cockalorum as now attends our public criticism of the B.B.C.?” World Film News August 8/2) and 2 “A person likened to a small or young cockerel or rooster; a pompous or self-important person. Also (esp. in high cockalorum): an important person; a boss or chief.” The etymology is extensive, verging on loquacious:
Origin uncertain. Probably an arbitrary formation, or perhaps an alteration of post-classical Latin in saecula saeculorum, a liturgical formula used to end prayers (see in saecula saeculorum adv. and compare culorum n.); in later use the first syllable is sometimes apprehended as < cock n.¹ (see note).
Compare hi cockalorum int., and also earlier jiggalorum n. and cockle-de-moy n.
Notes
Original use and parallels in other languages.
The word is likely to have been originally either a conjuror’s call (see sense A) or perhaps a call in the game of snip-snap-snorum (see snip-snap-snorum n. and compare earlier snap snorum n.). With the use as a conjuror’s call, compare hey presto int. at hey int. 3d and hey jingo at jingo int.. The ending of the word is apparently intended to reflect classical Latin ‑orum, genitive plural ending. For the use of mock Latin in conjuror’s calls, compare hocus-pocus n. A.2, bumbis n. Compare Danish kakkelorum, kakelorum, kakalorum, an interjection signalling a sudden transformation (1789), a piece of meaningless mock Latin used in rhymes (1827), Swedish kackalorum, kakalorum humbug, trick, hoax (1792), noise, racket, hullabaloo (1843), kolorum merrymaking, loud festive noise (1744), noise, racket, jeering (1771), Hungarian †hokus pokus kukulorum, a piece of meaningless mock Latin used as an imitation of a liturgical formula (1803), and German †kukulorum, a conjuror’s call (1827). Compare an earlier use of a similar piece of mock Latin in English, in an uncertain sense:
c1550 Eugenio. But vnderstande you this latyne. Irisdysion. Ye syr I trowe. Eugenio. Responde tunice [sic] domine doctor clericorum But syr knowe you any iustes of corum. Irisdision. Why so? Eugenio. A felowe of myne was take with a Cuculorum For a cupple horses he stale in an euenynge.
Enterlude Iohan Euangelyst sig. A.iiᵛIn the context of snip-snap-snorum, the call is first attested considerably later (1862, in the combination high cockolorum: compare hi cockalorum int.). Compare other calls used at the same point of the game in English and other languages: German apostolorum, bostelorum, bastelorum, bastelor, baselorum, basilurr, basiloniur, pasterlorum, fisilorum, ram-bas-culorum, Danish basselurre (all 19th cent.), English bachelorum (1862), Swedish hej bassalorum (1891), Dutch peccatorium (early 20th cent.).
Association with cock n.¹
The instance in quot. c1796–8 at sense B.2, usually interpreted as a reference to Alexander Gordon (c1678–1728), Marquess of Huntly (later second Duke of Gordon), apparently shows a pun on the calls used by conjurors or in the card game, on the use of hey int. in other lines within the stanza, and on the use of the Cock of the North as a nickname of the chiefs of Clan Gordon (compare cock n.¹ A.IV.13). A similar association with cock n.¹ (compare cocky adj. 2, cock v.¹ I.2) and a reinterpretation of the β forms at hi cockalorum adj., int., & n. as showing high adj. probably contributed to the development of senses related to self-importance and pomposity.
‘Buck’ is interesting, because my childhood name for a piggyback is ‘collie buckie’ – is that the same buck? But I don’t have time to wander down etymological rabbitholes right now!
My only experience with “buck buck” was from a missionary instructor who mentioned it in a passing remark to our group of trainees.
In a classroom break as we were wandering around campus as a group, one of my fellow newbies got the bright idea of jumping the instructor while yelling “buck buck”. However, he couldn’t see that the instructor was playing with a small pocketknife at the time, and the latter narrowly missed slicing off a finger.
We had, as a group, never heard of the game. The instructor like several members of the group was a Utahn.
“Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn’t, and high cockolorum,” said the Dodger: with a slight sneer on his intellectual countenance.
I find the word cockalorum irresistibly amusing, and I’m curious as to how widespread it is across the pond. (It is, as far as I know, entirely unknown to Americans.)
I like the diversity in terminology. It reminds me of the situation in Israel, where it was popular to play with apricot pits, a game similar to shooting marbles (I don’t suppose KT play it anymore.) The name for the pits/stones and the game varies (or did) from town to town. This is very striking for Israeli Hebrew, which generally has little or no geographical variation (or distinct topolects, if you will).
i’ve encountered the word “cockalorum” in (English) folk music and always wondered about it, but i never got around to actually looking it up; i assumed it meant something like “kerfuffle”, so i’m glad you went to the effort of including the definition, which is rather different.
i wonder how many words like this i have in my vocabulary, that i learned from some obscure source and which don’t mean anything like i think they mean.
This brought to mind something I hadn’t thought about in well over 50 years. When I was a child, my siblings and I would gather around the record player and listen to comedy albums by Bill Cosby (among others). On one of these he did a bit about buck buck, which was the first appearance of his (later rather well-known) character Fat Albert. If I recall correctly, he mentioned that the game was also called Johnny-on-the-Pony. Why would this sit dormant in my memory for all this time? It certainly wasn’t the funniest or most memorable of Cosby’s routines, (in my opinion).
@Y, “This is very striking for Israeli Hebrew, which generally has little or no geographical variation (or distinct topolects, if you will).”
I agree that no distinct topolects have emerged. Some geographical variation has been noted. The following is in all likelihood far from exhaustive:
Gold, David L. 1989. “Towards a Study of Spatial Variation in Latter-Day Israeli Hebrew.” Jewish Linguistic Studies. Pp. 89-103.
Thanks! I’ll check it out. I’ve only heard of Jerusalem (the word for ‘two hundred’), plus the extinct Galilean accent.
@Y. You will find Jerusalem (and Tiberian) Israeli Hebrew maatayim there. Jerusalem also has (had?) lifaamim ‘sometimes’ and the female given name naava.
The material was collected from 1975 to 1989. Whether anything has changed since then remains to be seen.
A quick check on the internet seems to indicate that ma’atayim is less used or not used by younger generations. I once asked my mother (born and raised in Jerusalem, later lived in Tel Aviv) about it, and she said me’atayim; in fact she wasn’t sure if she was still pronouncing it that way or if she’d switched to matayim like everyone else.
I remember encountering “high cockalorum” as a kid in some book of folktales, in a version of the story this paper is about.
cockalorum and its variants in other European languages look like they could have something to do with Rhenish Kokolores “nonsense”. I’ll check my sources when I’ll be back home.
We called the second variant described “Johnny ride a pony” (or maybe “Johnny ride the pony”, which would hardly be different in our pronunciation) in Queens, NY, in the 1950s.
The phrase “High Cockalorum” brought back a vivid auditory memory of a chanted song from a children’s animated film of the 1970s (1980s?) — “High! High! High! High Cocolorum! Hey! Hey! Hey! We’re on our way”. Or maybe “Cocolorum” is me having misheard “Cockalorum”, all those years ago.
I think I did mishear, because “Cocolorum” brings up no relevant hits. Although I am not the first to have so misheard.
https://www.exclassics.com/ingold/ing50.htm
Ah, this must have been what I remembered (and it is indeed High Cockalorum):
Water Babies (1978)
Funny old thing, memory.
Bockspringen.
Bock springend.