What Does "Alley-Alley Aster" mean?

We`re waiting for the storm to arrive here, and my 5 year old is looking out of the window at a huge black cloud thats approaching from the south west over Bardon hill.

She asked me if the wind was going to be strong enough to knock the house down and she actually seems quite worried so I told her the kids rhyme that we said when I was a chabby.

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day.

Shes now chanting that as if its a magic spell to keep away the bad weather- as I suppose we all did when we were kids, especially in the 6 week holidays when we were due to go for a day at the seaside.

Then I remembered the little rhyme we chanted on days when we had to do sport at school and didnt quite fancy going outside, it was drizzling but not fast enough so we`d chant:

Rain rain faster,

Alley alley aster.

So to freak the kid out, I started to say that over her `Rain, rain go away` chant and as I was babbling it, it occurred to me that I have never, in my 47 years actually met an Alley alley aster.

Did you chant that in your mis-spent youth? Do you know what an alley alley aster is...?

i have always wondered that! maybe someone couldn't remember the real words and was like...rain rain faster..um...alley alley aster...

i have always wondered that! maybe someone couldn't remember the real words and was like...rain rain faster..um...alley alley aster...

I wonder then, who the first child to say it was, and when...? Whoever it was and whenever it was, they would have made millions in royalties

maybe rain rain faster....and for it to go down the alley alley and aster just rhymes with faster?

maybe rain rain faster....and for it to go down the alley alley and aster just rhymes with faster?

Maybe it needs to get down the alley to water a very dried up aster that will die if it doesn't get there quickly:hihi:

I don't think it has to mean anything it's just a childs rhyme and that is all there is to it.

There is a Nordic myth-based book called Ally Ally Aster, which tells of an ice spirit who conjures up a terrible winter. Maybe its related to that (I've seen lots of 'snow snow faster, alley alley aster on the web) ?

Found a good link to the original Rain Rain rhyme - didnt know what it meant until I read that

If thats the case, the saying could be centuries old. Hard to think of us on Parson Cross saying it!

we used to say it as kids

i have always wondered that! maybe someone couldn't remember the real words and was like...rain rain faster..um...alley alley aster...

I always thought that, like a lot of other things in Sheffield, it derived from the French .. "allez, allez a (somewhere) and it had been corrupted to "ster" but I've never been able to think what the word could have been.

I always thought that, like a lot of other things in Sheffield, it derived from the French .. "allez, allez a (somewhere) and it had been corrupted to "ster" but I've never been able to think what the word could have been.

"Allez"...French word for "Go"?

"Aster"....shortened from the English word "faster"

Hence, in English "Go, go, faster" or "rain go away more quickly". Perhaps that's where it originated from in the children's saying.