The other night we watched “Meet Me in St. Louis” for the first time in forever, and so this morning, when I woke too early, the traditional song “Skip to My Lou,” sung by the Smith family and their guests, was bouncing around in my head. (Not, oddly, the better-known songs “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”) Though in the brain fog of sleep, I couldn't quite get one of the verses. I was thinking: “Butterfly in the ... milk? No, that scanned wrong. Butterfly in the buttermilk? That seemed more right. But why would you worry about a butterfly? Doesn't everyone love a butterfly?”

A second later, when I was more awake, it hit:

Fly in the buttermilk — shoo shoo shoo

But then what about the “Skip to the Loo” part? And that's what I was thinking it was: the loo. Was “loo” a bathroom? Was “loo” to the left? Skip to the left? That kind of made sense. But wrong. It's “my lou,” and according to Wikipedia, via Alan Lomax's “The Folk Songs of North America” (New York: Doubleday, 1960), it's Scottish for “my love.” It was a partner-swapping song—the swipe right/left of its time. One wonders if you could update a verse that way.

Swipe to the left of me —shoo shoo shoo
Swipe to the left of me — shoo shoo shoo
Swipe to the right of me — who are you?
Skip to my lou my darling

Here's the Smith family and their guests going at it. Have yourself a merry little Christmas.