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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts

children's song

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ5599266 ↗
Source-derived summary

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, is intended to inspire dark hilarity. 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.

A recording of the song by Mika Seeger was included in a 1959 Folkways release entitled The Sounds of Camp, as a short track titled "Jingle" in the digital version. This recording was rereleased on a 1990 Smithsonian Folkways compilation titled A Fish That's a Song, a collection of traditional public domain children's songs from the United States, with liner notes that include the lyrics:

See also

Children's street culture

Dead Skunk

References

Further reading

Josepha Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf, Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood (August House, 1995).

Pifer, Lynn."Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood." review of book by Sherman and Weisskopf). Journal of American Folklore. Washington: Winter 1997.Vol.110, Iss. 435; pg.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts” is children's song. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Great, Green and Gobs, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 1990, 1995, 1997—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Great, Green and Gobs is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “children's song” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5599266. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1990, 1995 and 1997.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts primary sources, Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts archive and Great research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.