Meaning and Origin
The seesaw is one of the oldest 'rides' for children, easily constructed from logs of different sizes. The words of "See Saw Margery Daw" reflect children playing on a see-saw and singing this rhyme to accompany their game. No person has been identified by the name Margery Daw and so it is assumed that this was purely used to rhyme with the words 'seesaw'.
The rhyme may have its origins as a work song for sawyers, helping to keep rhythm when using a two-person saw. In his 1640 play The Antipodes, Richard Brome indicated the connection between sawyers and the phrase "see saw sacke a downe". The game of see-saw in which two children classically sit opposite each other holding hands and moving backwards and forwards first appears in print from about 1700.
The Opies note that "daw" means "a lazy person", but in Scots it is "an untidy woman, a slut, a slattern" and give this variant of "Margery Daw":
- See-saw, Margery Daw,
- Sold her bed and lay on the straw;
- Sold her bed and lay upon hay
- And pisky came and carried her away.
- For wasn't she a dirty slut
- To sell her bed and lie in the dirt?
"Slut" may have carried no sexual connotations in this rhyme as its original meaning was simply "a slovenly woman". (Compare "Cinderslut", one of the older titles for "Cinderella", who was dirty in that she was covered in ashes from raking the cinders.)
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