Gāo Mò (The End of Gao)

Where this rhyme comes from

Played

about 565–577 AD

Where

Northern Qi, China

Written down

7th century

This is the oldest record we know of children chanting while they jump a rope. It comes at the end of the chapter on the last rulers of the Northern Qi dynasty in the History of the Northern Dynasties (北史, volume 8), compiled by the historian Li Yanshou in the 7th century. The same passage is in the Book of Northern Qi, although that chapter was later restored from other texts.

The historian lists strange signs that came before the dynasty fell in 577, and children's play is one of them:

遊童戲者，好以兩手持繩，拂地而卻上跳，且唱曰「高末」。高末之言，蓋高氏運祚之末也。

In English: "Children at play liked to hold a rope in both hands, sweep it along the ground and jump up over it, singing Gāo mò! The words Gāo mò meant, it seems, the end of the Gao family's fortune."

Gao (高) was the family name of the Northern Qi emperors, and mò (末) means "end". The children were probably just shouting a catchy chant; it was the grown-up historians who read it as a prophecy. A history written in the 7th century about the 570s is not an eyewitness account, but it is still the oldest description of skipping to a chant anywhere in the world.

Source: Li Yanshou, History of the Northern Dynasties (北史), vol. 8, 齊本紀下, end of the account of the Later Ruler. Chinese text on Wikisource (public domain). English translation by skip-hop. More in our history of skipping.