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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Thirty Days Hath September


I have trouble remembering which Mother Goose book we had when I was a child - possibly because we looked at it so often the cover got torn off. But it is probably where I first heard the Thirty Days Hath September rhyme.
The Mother Goose version went like this:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
February has twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one;
Excepting leap year, that's the time,
When February's days are twenty-nine.



Do school children still have to learn the months of the year and the number of days in those months as did I?
Reciting the mnemonic rhyme was how I was taught the months which had only thirty days instead of thirty-one. So when the teacher asked "How many days are in the month of July?", for instance, I could quickly recite the first two lines, know it wasn't one of those months and confidently say, "thirty-one". It was easy to remember February was the odd month with only twenty-eight days which was a good thing because I couldn't remember the way the rhyme ended.
And I still can't which is why when I looked it up this morning I was surprised to see all the different versions.  For instance:

Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November;
Thirty-one the others date,
Except in February, twenty-eight;
But in leap year we assign
February, twenty-nine.

There is also this other Mother Goose version:


Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear,
And twenty-nine in each leap year.


Did you have to memorize Thirty Days Hath September? Do you remember which version it was?

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