Description

Appreciate

This ‘Appreciate’ Birthday card is a simple graphic design of shades of colour with text set against a pale yellow background. The text reads ‘2 4 6 8 who do we appreciate? You! Happy Birthday’

There are many variations on two, four, six, eight. Here’s one for those who appreciate football.

Two, four, six, eight,
Who do we appreciate
Not the King and not the Queen
Just our favourite football team

The origin of the rhyme is lost in the mists of time and its use shows no sign of disappearing. What we do know is that in the 1880s Iona and Peter Opie collected nursery rhymes and their origins. They collected this version:

Two, four, six, eight
Mary’s at the cottage gate
Eating cherries off a plate
Two, four, six, eight

The rhyme travelled across the Atlantic, where it became variously,

Two, four, six, eight
Don’t make love at the garden gate
Because love is blind
But the neighbours ain’t

Two, four, six, eight
Papa caught a rattlesnake
The snake it died
And Papa cried
Two, four, six, eight

Can you almost hear the cadence and the rhythm of the children singing it aloud?

A Favourite Rhyme

Do you have a favourite rhyme? I love the one written by Lincoln Chase in the 1960s. It is not a ‘traditional’ rhyme, but it has all the feeling that makes a classic.

Three six nine,
the goose drank wine.
The monkey chew tobacco on the street car line.
The line broke,
the monkey got choked
and they all went to heaven in a little rowboat.

Yay for the ‘Appreciate’ Birthday card.

SKU: C0347