The first to notice the rhyme were folklorists, combing through the chants and skipping songs of rural villages. In one notebook from 1874, a rhyme was transcribed from a child in northern France:
"Round and round the circle goes,where it stops, nobody knows.If you're here and I am too,see you tomorrow, same as you."
Versions of the rhyme appeared across Europe, in America, even in the highlands of India. Words shifted, melodies bent, but the closing line remained fixed: "See you tomorrow."
Teachers wrote of children repeating the phrase obsessively during play, even after the game had ended. Some children swore they heard others whisper it into their ears, though no lips moved. In two villages, children who had led the chant disappeared. The survivors remembered their playmates' last words as nothing unusual: a simple farewell before vanishing.
The rhyme spread like contagion, resurfacing in different centuries without clear transmission. Scholars who compared versions across cultures noted that none of the children seemed to invent it themselves. It arrived fully formed, passed on by voices they could not name.
In the margin of one folklore journal, a shaken researcher wrote:
"The rhyme is not theirs. It is taught, not invented. It is instruction, not play."
Parents forbade the rhyme, banning its repetition. Yet decades later, fragments appeared again, recorded in playground songs. Always with the same closing promise: "See you tomorrow."
But those who sang it often did not live to see it.