See Saw, Margery Daw

Origins

The words of this rhyme first showed up in books in the 1760s, but people had been saying them long before. Back then, see-saw wasn’t just a game. It was the chant of men cutting wood with a two-handled saw, back and forth, back and forth. When the playground plank came along, kids borrowed the rhythm. Before long, “See-saw, Margery Daw” was echoing from both the workshop and the nursery.

Meaning

At first glance, it’s a simple playground chant — the rhythm of going up and down on a seesaw. But tucked inside those four lines is a sharper note. Jacky is handed off to a new master and earns only a penny a day, no matter how hard he works. That line reflects the reality of poorly paid apprentices and child laborers in earlier centuries. The rhyme doesn’t lecture about it; it just slips the idea into a sing-song verse. Kids focused on the bounce and beat, while adults may have noticed the echo of real working life hidden in the chant.

Victorian illustrators usually softened the edges. They drew happy children teetering up and down on a wooden seesaw, hair flying and arms stretched wide. For them, the rhyme was about play, not poverty. But in the oral tradition, it worked both ways. Children had the rhythm and motion, while adults recognized the digs at wages and laziness. Even the name “Margery Daw” wasn’t special — “daw” was an old word for someone idle or foolish, and it simply stuck because it rhymed.

These days, kids rarely hear the full verse. What survives is the sing-song “See-saw, Margery Daw” chanted on the playground. And maybe that’s enough — it still carries the bounce and beat that made it fun in the first place. 

Sheet music