Table Of Content, ,
games rhymes
and wordplay
of london
children
N. G. N. Kelsey
e d i t e d b y
Janet E. Alton
J. D. A. Widdowson
Games, Rhymes, and Wordplay of London
Children
“Children’s lore is a fascinating mixture of the old and new, and of continuity
and change. They will draw readily on the up-to-date mass media of the day, and
in the next minute sing a tune hundreds of years old. They will play a game that
is known the world over, but make a small change and claim it as their own.
They can be sticklers for the rules, but willing to change them at a moment’s
notice, if circumstances dictate. And all the time they are picking up, and pass-
ing on, the language and lore of their little community. Nigel Kelsey’s is without
doubt the most comprehensive collection made in London in the later twentieth
century, and it is especially valuable because he succeeded in capturing the chil-
dren’s traditional world in all its wonderful chaos, colour, and irreverence. And
he was experienced enough to provide an insightful commentary on the material
he found. The editors of this book have done an excellent job organising the
material and providing notes and references to other collections. The result is
both a scholarly reference work for generations to come, and a joy to read in the
present. I defy anyone who was a child between the 1960s and 1980s to read it
without being transported back in time, and without exclaiming ‘We did that!’,
or ‘That’s not how it goes, our version was ...’”
—Steve Roud, author of Folk Song in England (2016), The Lore of the
Playground (2011), and co-author of A Dictionary of English Folklore (2000)
amongst other works. He is the creator of the Folk Song Index and served as
Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society, UK
“It is really exciting that Nigel Kelsey’s collection of more than 2000 games, songs,
wordplay, beliefs and practices, and other kinds of folklore from children in inner-
city London is about to be published. Between 1966 and 1984, as a primary
school teacher, Kelsey gathered this material from preadolescents. The quality of
his scholarship is outstanding; there are many significant analyses of the historical,
cultural, developmental, and social dimensions of children’s folklore. With metic-
ulous annotations, this collection constitutes a treasure trove of information and
insights for scholars. It will also be of great interest to general readers who are
interested in the dynamic transmission of children’s traditions.”
—Elizabeth Tucker, Distinguished Service Professor of English, Binghamton
University, USA
“This book coheres with a long and honourable tradition of folkloric research
and analysis. Its focus is the folklore of children – still a neglected field of aca-
demic study. The authors have built on the fieldwork of an earlier scholar to
produce a learned historical, sociological and linguistic study of the playlore of
children in inner London in the latter part of the twentieth century. They have
connected their source material with relevant research undertaken in other
countries, particularly English-speaking societies. It will interest all who seek to
remember and explore the lore and language of children at play.”
—June Factor, Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia
N. G. N. Kelsey
Author
Janet E. Alton • J. D. A. Widdowson
Editors and Annotators
Games, Rhymes, and
Wordplay of London
Children
Editors
Janet E. Alton J. D. A. Widdowson
Centre for English Traditional Heritage Centre for English Traditional Heritage
Edale, Hope Valley, UK Edale, Hope Valley, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-02909-8 ISBN 978-3-030-02910-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02910-4
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FOREWORD
Nigel Kelsey’s opening line of the Introduction should stick with you. Or
at least it has with me. He calls children’s lore “the most real and vigorous”
of London’s contemporary oral traditions, and the ideas in the deceiv-
ingly simple phrase are worth thinking about. He likely meant to pin this
tag on any contemporary city, raising a question about preconceptions
concerning the vitality of traditional knowledge and practice, not only in
the workaday city, but in the modern age always accelerating into the
future. Because adults are wont to be embarrassed about acting “childish”
and probably forgetting use of folklore in their own human development,
Kelsey invites them to listen more closely to children’s voices and watch
their actions so as to appreciate what a lively, “vigorous” world they create
for themselves, and often hide from adults. Grownups might presume
that media and urban centrality of society have displaced passing down
traditions, and Kelsey further reminds them of children’s needs for social
and psychological connection through folk expression. “Vigorous” is one
of his favourite adjectives to describe children’s activities, probably to
draw out a distinction often made between the rapidity of kids compared
with the “settling down” process that comes with maturity and often is
accompanied by a certain fatalistic longing for a past freedom of move-
ment. Observers often describe the playground as chaotic, even danger-
ous, but Kelsey discerns a reassuring cultural order from a child’s eye view.
What he saw, as well as heard, was not a rote r eproduction of games,
v
vi FOREWORD
rhymes, and stories that elders once experienced as children, but rather
imaginative variations on old themes and vibrant new expressions using
familiar formulas to comment on the world of the here and now as well
as in their life journeys ahead. In light of some current debates about
institutional restrictions, and even banishment, of recess (Beresin 2010),
he finds a predictable commotion that instead of being condemned
should be lauded for representing the exciting bloom of youth and stud-
ied for what children can teach adults rather than the other way around.
Using the metaphor from physics of colliding particles, writers might call
the sights and sounds of childhood “dynamic” and note the paradoxical
fidelity to tradition at the same time that there is an urge to create anew.
Looking from the vantage of the twenty-first century, we realise that the
dynamic process he described is hardly a relic of the twentieth century; it
continues with ever new trajectories into the digital age.
Why is this news? At least the part about the expressive culture of
youth undoubtedly was hardly novel to the students he recorded. I
know from my own collecting experience that they might have been
guarded about spilling the beans on their cultural world with its dis-
tinctive, even secret, language, conduct, and codes, but at the same
time appreciative that adults cared to listen rather than telling them
what to do, and more often than not, what not to do (Bronner 1988).
They are typically unaware of the vintage of their lore or the signifi-
cance of their invented traditions. Yet they do often know that this
lore matters, and can comment on its meaning and function. Indeed
a newsworthy aspect of Kelsey’s collection is that he recorded what
has been called “oral literary criticism” as well as the texts and con-
texts of the lore (Dundes 1966). These comments allow not just folk-
lorists to dig deeper into the workings of tradition, but also parents,
teachers, neighbours, counsellors—and adults who were once chil-
dren—to grasp what kids are trying to tell about themselves, and us.
Adults probably forgot the use of lore in childhood to organise and
legislate themselves. They might recall with hurt the taunts, teases,
and threats that separated as well as united them. They possibly
remember the anxieties about the future expressed in divinations, rit-
uals, and inscriptions, but lest they appear to affect their present, they
might dismiss the lore too readily. Kelsey’s collection is a chance to
FOREWORD vii
identify continuities, and discrepancies, of memory and an opportu-
nity to conduct a life review or prepare to guide the next generation
culturally and psychologically.
Kelsey is fairly transparent about his thinking behind “vigorous” in his
opening line, but what about the “real”? Is he implying the existence of a
“fake” folk culture in London and elsewhere? Kelsey certainly was not
looking for children untouched by popular culture and he was not likely
to find them even if he had. He did not shy away from lore informed by
television and other media, and indeed his documentation of parodies
and responses to popular shows is significant. He should be credited, too,
with folk expressions among children generated by commercial sports.
He was not, in other words, erecting a wall between folklore and moder-
nity, but rather viewing folklore as part and parcel of contemporary soci-
ety. He did not limit folklore to oral tradition, either, as his delineation of
“pen and pencil games” and written inscriptions indicates. He was acutely
aware, especially in the 1960s during a “folk revival”, that folklore was
open to exploitation in tourist and sentimental literature, and Kelsey
contrasted what he heard generated by children with literary productions
imposed upon children. He garnered trust among his informants to give
him risqué material, although he apparently buried some items he con-
sidered too offensive, which probably meant he was worried that since his
informants were minors he could potentially have been in hot water with
their parents. Sure, many collectors, including the famous husband-wife
team of Iona and Peter Opie (1959, 1969), gave attention to indelicate
games and rhymes, but what I find especially valuable is genres such as
jokes, pranks, and parodies that are part of everyday discourse among
youth, but are often overlooked or underestimated. I might nonetheless
hold Kelsey to task for labelling some of them “just for fun” when in their
use of humour and a “play frame”, they often broach a serious message.
In sum, by “real” Kelsey asks us to look at the integration of folklore in
everyday life rather than apart from it.
One indication of this integration is the ages of the youth from whom
he collected. He notes that they mostly are between the ages of nine and
eleven. Often anthologies of childlore associate any rhymes and games
with a broad swath of childhood, and in the process render childhood in
often romanticised terms as life before adulthood rather than in terms of
viii FOREWORD
human development. Indeed, some parents as well as scholars might
imagine that folklore arises early in life from a lack of literacy and formal
education. Kelsey was impressed with the amount of material when the
children were not only literate but well along in their schooling. Their
education, reliant as it was on book culture, was not a reason to abandon
reliance on oral tradition. Certainly there was more that he could have
done with adolescents, but he implied that the tenor of the lore changed
during the teen years away from games and rhymes, and more to social
customs, probably owing to post-pubertal interests. He offers evidence to
a theory I proposed in Explaining Traditions (2011) that youth in middle
childhood in modern culture use folklore more so than other times in
their lives to provide adjustment to the significant, if often overlooked,
emotional, social, and physical changes associated with the pre-pubescent
years. Social scientists as well as humanists have been slow to recognise
the distinctiveness of this age, although in popular culture, it is some-
times referred to as the “tween” years. Indeed, the betwixt and between
nature of the age between toddler and teen status lends a liminal status to
the age that impels folkloric functions of dealing with anxiety and para-
dox in the symbolic realm of folklore. Folklore, with its ritual passages,
symbolic tools of expression and persuasion, and lessons for social rela-
tions and roles, takes on an extraparental role. With change as the one
constant of modern life, folklore provides a familiar, reassuring type of
learning, a cultural register in which children can anticipate the future
and express concerns about the present. In London, as in other places
representing the specially modern, children want to declare their own
identity, and lore is their protected expression of cultural connection to
one another. Increasingly independent at younger ages, children fiercely
hang on to their cultural property to express their distinct personality and
social separation from other ages. Increasingly left to themselves, and in
fact separating from parents earlier, children use folklore to help them
grow and cope.
Toward the admirable goal of interpreting the significance of folklore in
youth culture as it affects human development and societal “dynamics”,
Janet Alton and J.D.A. Widdowson provide an exemplary model for iden-
tification and annotation, the first critical step in a folkloristic methodology
(Bronner 2017). Annotation is a laborious and challenging task, but none-
FOREWORD ix
theless essential, to establish the traditionality and context of expressions.
The notes establish the historic lineage of folklore and identify those items
that have arisen in contemporary settings. Their command of the literature
is exceptional and they bring a world-renowned linguistic expertise to the
study of children’s folklore in addition to an intimate knowledge of the set-
tings in which Kelsey collected. Alton and Widdowson are especially good
at elucidating the many popular allusions contained in children’s folklore
that respond to media and advertisements. Indeed, they have made annota-
tion an art form that assuredly illuminates the central significance of play
in the lives of children from generation to generation, and from locality to
locality. To their credit, they retained multiple versions of folkloric items,
and thereby show that there is not a “correct” version but instead various
expressions that children freely use and adapt. With their masterful help,
Kelsey the teacher has let the students instruct us about the vigorous and
real traditions of youth. They will remind us of what it means to grow up
in this city, and this world, and how it affects us as grownups.
Simon J. Bronner,
Pennsylvania State University
State College, PA, USA
REFERENCES
Beresin, A. R. (2010). Recess battles: Playing, fighting, and storytelling. Jackson,
MS: University Press of Mississippi.
Bronner, S. J. (1988). American children’s folklore. Little Rock, AR: August
House.
Bronner, S. J. (2011). Explaining traditions: Folk behavior in modern culture.
Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
Bronner, S. J. (2017). Folklore: The basics. London: Routledge.
Dundes, A. (1966). “Metafolklore and oral literary criticism”. Monist, 50,
505–516.
Opie, I, and Opie, P. (1959). The lore and language of schoolchildren. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Opie, I, and Opie, P. (1969). Children’s games in street and playground. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
