For those who are curious about the song, here is some additional information about it, and about the genre of nonsense songs.
How old is it?
Older than Bugs Bunny. It's an old Boy Scout camp song which predates Bugs. It goes back to the early 1900s according to contemplator: http://www.contemplator.com/england/gogetax.html (contemplator moves its songs around, so if this is now a broken link, search for go get the axe on their site).
It's not terribly old in the world of folk music. Some additional references:
Peterson's magazine, vol 92 1888 quotes references a political parody tune: "At the April dinner of the GridIron club at the Arlington Hotel in Washington, April 22, four members sung to the tune of "The little black bull" a song, the title of which was given as "Peeping through the Knot Hole in Papa's Wooden Leg or Why Was the Ocean Built so Near to the Shore?"
There's a reference in the 1904 book
Jim Hickey :a story of the one-night stands /by George V. Hobart One-night stands here has little to do with the modern meaning, but rather, refers to a troup of comic actors and singers who travel and perform, one night each place.
'The Hackney Scout Song Book' (1938 edition) references an older YMCA Camp Song book
What is the point?
A Charlotte Mason education is not utilitarian.
There is a place in your children's life for nonsense and fun, and just plain hilarity and giddiness. That place is where Go Get the Axe belongs. Again, you can definitely and freely, without any condemnation from us, choose a different folksong. Just make sure there is room and material for a bit of free nonsense in your child's life.
From volume 2:
Rest––At the same time, change of occupation is not rest: if a man ply a machine, now with his foot, and now with his hand, the foot or the hand rests, but the man does not. A game of romps (better, so far as mere rest goes, than games with laws and competitions), nonsense talk, a fairy tale, or to lie on his back in the sunshine, should rest the child, and of such as these he should have his fill.
From volume 6, in a section where Mason is lamenting the educational, and life, failures of two overly earnest young men who attempt to learn and memorize their way through life, going at all their subjects all wrong, because they have "never got so far as to learn that knowledge is delightful because one likes it; and that no effort at self-education can do anything until one has found out this supreme delightfulness of knowledge."
Give children the chance to appreciate nonsense and absurdity.
"A cultivated sense of humour is a great factor in a joyous life, but these young men are without it. Perhaps the youth addicted to sports usually fails to appreciate delicate nonsense; sports are too strenuous to admit of a subtler, more airy kind of play and we read:
R––heard Mr. Balfour and Lord Rayleigh praising Alice in Wonderland. Deeply impressed he bought the book as soon as he returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he saw no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant as nonsense and he had another try, then he concluded that it was rather funny but he remained disappointed."
The sense of humour that allows children (and adults) to appreciate nonsense also allows them the grace of self-depreciation, humility, the ability to laugh at themselves when they are being absurd.
Children need, "wholesome happy nonsense, and the children who can thoroughly enjoy it are growing up with that inestimable treasure a sense of humour - that salt in ourselves which brings savour out of the commonplace, and preserves us from the infection of the stale, the flat, the unprofitable dullness of prosaic minds."
Admittedly, a very little of this goes a long way, and we do not need to introduce the children to too much silliness. They will arrive at it on their own, anyway. Including an occasional silly song or nonsense verse is helpful in giving them a template for the form and metre, for showing them how it might be done cleverly and with wit, and for letting them know that parents, too, can appreciate a bit of frivolity. But don't overdo it.
From volume 1:
"The Sense of Incongruous.––All their lessons will afford some scope for some slight exercise of the children's thinking power, some more and some less, and the lessons must be judiciously alternated, so that the more mechanical efforts succeed the more strictly intellectual, and that the pleasing exercise of the imagination, again, succeed efforts of reason. By the way, it is a pity when the sense of the ludicrous is cultivated in children's books at the expense of better things. Alice in Wonderland is a delicious feast of absurdities, which none of us, old or young, could afford to spare; but it is doubtful whether the child who reads it has the delightful imaginings, the realising of the unknown, with which he reads The Swiss Family Robinson.
This point is worth considering in connection with Christmas books for the little people. Books of 'comicalities' cultivate no power but the sense of the incongruous; and though life is the more amusing for the possession of such a sense, when cultivated to excess it is apt to show itself a flippant habit. Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of Troy is irresistible, but it is not the sort of thing the children will live over and over, and 'play at' by the hour, as we have all played at Robinson Crusoe finding the footprints. They must have 'funny books,' but do not give the children too much nonsense reading."
If you do choose to use this song, in addition to just singing it for fun, you can also play around with the lyrics.
There are many different verses, so you can look up other versions and add them.
Your kids can make up their own if they like.
Another verse:
The chambermaid came to the door,
"Wake up you lazy sinners.
We need those sheets for tablecloths,
and it's almost time for dinner."
Use other familiar poems to make up silly verses:
Under the spreading chestnut tree,
The village smithy stands:
The smith a mighty man is he –
But we'll throw him through the window.
The window! The window!
We'll throw him through the window.
The smith a mighty man is he –
But we'll throw him through the window.
The boy stood on the burning deck,
And he refused to leave:
He said, "When this deck gets burnt out –
I'll throw it through the window."
Old Mother Hubbard she went to the cupboard,
To get the poor dog a bone:
But when she got there the cupboard was bare –
So she threw it through the window.
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner,
Eating his Christmas pie:
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum –
And he threw it through the window.
Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey:
There came a big spider, and sat down beside her –
So she threw it through the window.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water:
Jack fell down and broke his crown –
So she threw him through the window.
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon:
The little dog laughed to see such fun –
So they threw him through the window.
Above is from an old boy scout camp song book.
Make up your own with other nursery rhymes or poems your family knows:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And threw it out the window, the window
The FIRST story window
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And threw it out the window,
Mary had a little lamb,
It's fleece was white as snow
And everywhere that she would go,
She'd throw it out the window, the window, the second story window
Everywhere that Mary went, she threw it out the window.
Little Bo Peep, she lost her sheep
And knew not where to find them
Leave them alone and they'll come home
Then throw them out the window, the window,
the third story window. Leave them alone and they'll come home
then throw them out the window.
Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
There came a great spider which sat down beside her
and she jumped out the window!
The window, the window, the fourth story window
There came a great spider which sat down beside her
so she jumped out he window.
Little Jack Horner sat in his corner
Eating his Christmas pie
He stuck in his thumb and drew out a plum
Then threw it out the window, the window the fifth story window
He stuck in his plum then drew out a plum and threw it out the window
And so on with as many MOther Goose rhymes as you care to try.
Here's the Harvard version, learn it and learn some synonyms:
Peering through the aperture in father's artificial appendage
who'll tighten the chronometer when I cross the bar?
go procure the viand dissector, there's an insect on baby's cerebellum
one of the greatest sociological factors of the development of the male of the species Homo Sapiens is his immediate maternal ancestor.
As with all songs where children start making up verses to fit the tune and pattern of the lyrics, they are actually learning about rhythm and meter without stress- some lines fit, some need to be shortened or lengthened, and the kids will figure it out. Doing this strengthens their ability to work with words and to make words work for them, to understand the mechanics of poetry conceptually long before they are given the technical terms for rhyme schemes and metre. Not that there needs to be a utilitarian purpose and function to everything you do. Nonsense adds a bit of lightness and fizz to the juice of life.
It's okay to just have fun.
(above info gleaned mostly from Mudcat.org)
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