Sinty, Tinty, Huthery,
Muthery, banks o' litery
Over, dover, dicker, dog,
San, dan, dush.


Sinty Tinty Huthery is a counting rhyme used in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, New Zealand, and America in many variants. Oh, so very many variants. It is falling out of common use, so you might not recognize it in any of its forms, but just to be thorough, here are 16 different starting lines recorded over the course of the last century and a half:

Een teen tuther further fip.
Zinti tinti, tethera, methera.
Zeenty teenty, heathery bethery.
Yan, teean, tethera, methera, pip.
Eenty teenty ithery bithery.
Zeenty teenty tether a mether.
Scinty, tinty, heathery, beathery.
Eeny, teeny, ether, fether, fip.
Zeinty, teinty, Henry, mothery.
Rene, tene, tother, feather, fip.
Aina, peina, para, peddera, pimp.
Ain, tain, tethera, pethera, pimpi.
Tedery, peddery, slatter, latter.
Eeny, teeny, other feathery hip.
Eenty, teenty, heather bell.
Eentie teentie tithery mithery bamfileerie.

Those are all first lines of different variants of the rhyme; as you might expect, the later lines are at least as variable. It would be fair to say that this is a vaguely defined family of nonsense rhymes, at best. You could certainly argue that even 'vaguely defined' is pushing it -- for example, there are a surprising number of rhymes starting with 'Eentie, Teentie' or some variant thereof, and those who study children's rhymes do not generally consider this strong evidence that those rhymes are related. However, Sinty, Tinty, Huthery and its extended family have garnered more than their fair share of attention due to a long-standing belief that they may be variants of an Anglo-cymric score -- a set of ancient Celtic counting systems used by used by shepherds in the British Isles; the most familiar example of these is the Yan Tan Tethera

The counting-out rhymes Eenie Meenie Miny Mo and Onery, Twoery, Ickery are also thought to have derived from Celtic counting systems, and many scholarly articles have been written on them. Of course, now that they are children's counting rhymes they have mutated quite a bit, and usually include more intelligible verses... although 'more intelligible' is somewhat subjective; a variant found from Wales to Rhode Island in the seventies ended "As I sat on my sooty kin / I saw the king of Irel Pirel / Playing on Jerusalem pipes", which I certainly cannot decipher.


Up the causey, down the cross
There stands a bonny white horse
It can gallop, it can trot
It can carry the mustard pot.