Jenny, Good Spinner Lyrics
A Scottish rhyme that calls the spinner down to dinner and asks everyone to look over the kirk steeple at a cat playing with a dog.
Jenny, Good Spinner
Jenny, good spinner,
Come down to your dinner,
And taste the leg of a roasted frog!
I pray ye, good people,
Look owre the kirk steeple,
And see the cat play wi' the dog!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/jenny-good-spinner/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Chanted in a sing-song voice
- Best for ages
- 4 to 8 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| Come down to your dinner | Beckon with a curling finger. |
| Look owre the kirk steeple | Shade your eyes and look up high. |
| see the cat play wi' the dog | Make a cat with one hand and a dog with the other and let them tumble. |
What Does Jenny, Good Spinner Mean?
The rhyme is a call and a joke. First someone shouts up to the spinner, Jenny, that dinner is ready. Then the whole crowd is told to look over the kirk steeple, the church tower, for an odd sight: the cat playing with the dog.
The leg of a roasted frog is the silly part of the menu, and the world turned upside down is the other. Children enjoy the surprise of the picture.
History and Origin
Robert Ford prints it in Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories among its counting-out rhymes.
The book gives no date and no author for the Jenny verse. The Scots words, owre for over and wi' for with, show where it was said.
Learning Activities
- Call and answer: one child calls the first three lines and the group answers with the rest.
- Odd picture: draw a cat and a dog playing together outside a church.
- Scots words: find the Scots words and write the modern ones next to them.