Round and Round the Garden

History & Origin

"Round and Round the Garden" is one of the best-loved finger-play rhymes in the English language, designed to be performed on a child's palm. The adult traces a circle on the child's hand — "round and round the garden" — then walks two fingers up the arm — "one step, two step" — before tickling under the chin, arm, or wherever the game is played. The anticipation built by those two slow steps, and the surprise of the tickle, makes the rhyme reliably effective with babies and toddlers.

Despite its wide use, the rhyme is surprisingly recent in the documented record. It does not appear in the major nineteenth-century collections and was not recorded in print until the twentieth century. Peter and Iona Opie, the leading authorities on British nursery rhymes, noted its popularity but suggested it was a modern composition rather than an ancient tradition.

Whatever its origins, the rhyme works because of the physical interaction it invites. It is one of a group of lap and finger-play rhymes — "This Little Piggy", "Pat-a-Cake", "Incy Wincy Spider" — that turn a simple verse into a game between parent and child. Our energetic arrangement captures the fun of the tickle.