This old man, he played one
He played knick-knack on my thumb
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played two
He played knick-knack on my shoe
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played three
He played knick-knack on my knee
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played four
He played knick-knack on my door
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played five
He played knick-knack on my hive
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played six
He played knick-knack with some sticks
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played seven
He played knick-knack up to Heaven
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played eight
He played knick-knack on my gate
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played nine
He played knick-knack on my spine
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played ten
He played knick-knack once again
Knick-knack paddy whack
Give the dog the bone
This old man came rolling home.

What kind of sick game is this knick-knack, you may wonder, snickering immaturely to yourself.  What kind of game can you play on someone’s thumb, and shoe, and knee, and door, and hive, and spine?  There must be some kind of innuendo there!

In fact, that’s all in your dirty mind.  I did actual research, with the internet, and found out that “knick knack” was what you called it when you beat out a particular rhythm with spoons.  The old man isn’t playing a game – he’s playing music.  Poorly.

According to our narrator, his first attempt is a count of one – a steady metronome carried out on the poor witness’s thumb.  The last line asserts the old man will later “come rolling home”, implying the narrator is a member of his immediate family.  Most likely, it’s the spoon-musician’s kid referring to him as the “old man.”

The old guy’s main characteristics so far are annoyingness.  Then comes the ominous, “Knick knack paddy wack” –and you get the sense that the old man’s knick-knacking has gone too far.  He’s taken his act away from home – to a paddy, which dictionary.com assures me is a bog where you grow rice.  The knick-knacking ends abruptly here, with a “wack” – immediately followed by his dog receiving a bone.  Wading through the high paddy waters, it’s possible he accidentally wacked some small animal to death with his out-of-control spoon-music, and then goes home.

But it happens again the next day.

He starts out, again, annoyingly, smacking out a two-beat rhythm on his kid’s shoe.  Then finds himself again in the paddy, and again – wack!  And his dog gets a bone.

It’s not that easy to accidentally hit small animals with spoons.

Maybe he’s doing it on purpose.  Or, maybe we should be using the other definition of “wack.”  The one that refers to the kills of crime rings.

The old man seems to have stumbled into the boggy dumping ground of some criminal element.  Rather than being disturbed or concerned, however, the gross old spoon-musician starts wrenching up decaying limbs to feed his dog.

Then he starts knick-knacking again the next day, to a count of three, continuing an increasingly ritualistic-looking pattern, where he spoon-bangs weird parts of his kid’s body and varying architectural crevices of symbolic importance and then scurries off to the paddy to gorge his hound on dead people.  He ends each day by himself rolling around in the paddy waters.  Your dirty mind is probably right this time – the old man won’t go home until he satiates his hankering for necrophilia.

The child-narrator can’t fully articulate the creepiness to which he bears witness day after day.  It seems the kid, reared near some remote bog by a dead-body desecrating crime associate who beats him with spoons for entertainment, is only beginning to notice something’s wrong.