The song "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts" is a children's public domain playground song popular throughout the United States. Dating back to at least the mid-20th century, the song is sung to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare". The song, especially popular in school lunchrooms and at summer camps, presents macabre horrors through cheerful comedy while allowing children to explore taboo images and words especially as they relate to standards of cleanliness and dining. Many local and regional variations of the lyrics exist, but whatever variant, they always entail extensive use of the literary phonetic device known as an alliteration which helps to provide an amusing description of animal body parts and fluids not normally consumed by Americans.
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Smithsonian Folkways version
The song appears on the Smithsonian Folkways compilation release entitled A Fish That's A Song, a collection of traditional public domain children's songs from the United States performed by Mika Seeger. The Smithsonian release appears to be derived from an earlier 1959 release entitled The Sounds Of Camp.
The lyrics performed by Mika Seeger are as follows:
Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat. French fried flamingo feet. French fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood And me without my spoon.Texas Version
Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey's meat. Bitty Baby Birdy feet French fried eyeballs soaking in a pool of blood, And me without a spoon (But there's a straw.....)We are smarter than you think (well, some)
Michigan Version
Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts Mutulated Monkey Meat Chopped Up Birdies Feet Great Big Eyeballs Swimming in a Pool of Blood Gee! I Forgot My Spoon!St.Louis Version
Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, Chopped up parrot feet. French fried eye balls, Swimmin' in a pool of blood, Eat it with out a spoon. Burp.New York Version
Lyrics of a more extensive version from New York City was in use during the 1990s as follows:
Yankee Doodle went to town a-ridin’ on a gopher Bumped into a garbage can and this is what fell over: Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, chopped up baby parakeet. French-fried eyeballs rolling down the street. Oops, I forgot my spoon! So they gave me a split-splat, pus-on-top, Monkey vomit and camel snot, All wrapped up in birdie poo, So eat it, (name), it’s good for you! With vitamin C, and protein too And don’t forget the doggie doo! Upstate New York version Recalled from the 1970's is another verse including "quarts and quarts of all purpose porpoise pus"Eastern Pennsylvania Version
Great big globs of greasy grimy gopher guts Mutilated monkey meat All mixed in with All-Purpose Porpoise Pus And me without a spoon (add on line) But with a straw!Pittsburgh version
The following version was sung in the mid-1950s in the Shadyside and East Liberty neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, dirty little birdy feet, Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts, And me without my spoon.This alternate Pittsburgh version was sung in the 1980s in the Shadyside and East Liberty neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as the eastern suburbs.
Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, little dirty birdy feet, Those are the things that I really like to eat, And I forgot my spoon.Another suburban Pittsburgh variant of the song dated near c.2005
Great green globs of gooey, gooey gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, Little birdy's dirty feet, All wrapped up in pickle-pepper porpoise pus, Sitting in pink lemonade (without a straw).Washington version
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts, constipated camel feet, mutilated monkey meet, all bunched up with french fried eyeballs, and I forgot my spoon!Georgia version
As made popular by local Atlanta comedian Daniel Weinstein in 1970s
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, Chopped up parakeet. French fried eyeballs, Rolling down the dirty street, Oops I forgot my spoon!New Jersey version
This version was sung in the 1960s and 70s, in the Livingston area.
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat,
French fried parakeet,
All mixed together with fuzzy wuzzy beetle brains
That's what we had for lunch.
Northern New Jersey version (circa 1970s)
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts, Mutilated monkey meat, Little birdy's dirty feet, French fried eyeballs floating in a frying pan. I forgot my spoon, so give me a scab sandwich with puss on top, Monkey vomit and camel snot, elephant eyeballs cut in two, eat it <name>, it's good for you.Bizarre Foods America rap version
Bizarre Foods America, a cooking show which began airing in 2012 on cable television's Travel Channel, uses a hip-hop version for its theme song. The rapped lyrics are backed by keyboards and electronically produced drum beats.