Counting Rhymes

One Potato, Two Potato

Where the rhyme comes from

One Potato, Two Potato belongs to the great family of playground counting-out rhymes — the chants children use to decide who is “it”. Versions were being collected by folklorists on both sides of the Atlantic by the end of the nineteenth century, when the Journal of American Folklore was recording schoolyard chants in quantity, and it has stayed in common use in Britain, Ireland, North America and Australia ever since.

Unlike a printed nursery rhyme, it has no single author and no fixed first edition: it travelled by mouth, from one playground to the next, which is why the last line is sometimes “seven potato, more” and sometimes “seven potato, or”. The potato itself is the clue to its likely age — the vegetable had become an everyday staple across the English-speaking world during the nineteenth century, and the word’s three neat syllables make an unusually good beat for counting fists.

What does it mean?

Chiefly, it means “you are it”. The rhyme is a fair-choosing device: the players hold out their fists, one child taps each fist in turn on every beat, and whoever’s fist falls on “more” is out (or in some versions, chosen). The fist goes behind the back and the count begins again until one player is left.

The famine theory. Because of the potato, the rhyme is sometimes said to carry a memory of the Irish potato famine, or of children counting a meagre harvest. This is folklore rather than documented history — no early source connects the two, and counting-out rhymes have used all sorts of everyday words (apples, sausages, bottles) in the same slot.

The counting-out inheritance. A better-supported view is simply that it is one of hundreds of nonsense counting-out chants, close cousins of “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” and “Ip dip sky blue”, in which the rhythm matters far more than the words. Its job is to sound impartial, so that no child can argue with the result.

Sharing it with children

Play it properly with fists. Stand in a circle, everyone holds out two closed fists, and one child taps a fist on each beat — one, two, three, four — so the counting is felt in the hands as well as heard. It is a lovely first lesson in one-to-one correspondence: one tap, one number, every time.

For younger children, line up real potatoes (or wooden blocks) and move one forward for each number, then count them back down from seven to one. Older children can predict who will be “out” before the count begins — changing the starting player and watching the answer change is a first taste of arithmetic patterns. It also works as a skipping chant, one jump per potato.

Extra verses to sing

These verses aren’t traditional — they’re ours. Add them when the counting needs to go on a little longer.

More rhymes to explore

• One, Two, Buckle My Shoe — counting all the way to twenty
• One, Two, Three, Four, Five — catching a fish alive
• Ten Green Bottles — counting back down again