Archive of Korean Traditional Folk Songs

(Naju, Jeonnam Province/ Bak, Man-bae(66yrs)/ 1989)

◆ Song for counting the numbers while drawing up water with the bucket from a pool below the rice paddy. Two people stand facing each other and draw up water holding the ropes of the bucket. It is said that they would repeat drawing up the bucket, few thousand times within just one day. Since it was tedious just counting simple numbers, the workers make words related to the numbers.

(Content of Song)
“It's a ten
Eleven
Twelve
…
Eighteen
Nineteen
My son-in-law is here (the Korean word for son-in-law can be adapted to mean four and five, i.e. meaning 4×5=20)
Twenty-one
bake a yellow egg
Roast the black sea-plant
Eat a lot of boiled barely rice
Thirty
Thirty-one…”

« CD03 | Farming Songs | Jeonnam Province