Games and Songs of American Children

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4327988
AutoresPatricia H Carpenter (autor correspondente), William Wells Newell
Ano1966
Volume25
Fascículo1
Páginas64
Data de publicação1966-01-01
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoWestern Folklore (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0043-373X • E-ISSN: 2325-811X
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1498620
OpenAlexW4229975281
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5

The hideous Thickets in this place* were such that Wolfes and Beares nurst up their young from the eyes of all beholders in those very places where the streets are full of Girles and Boys sporting up and downe, with a continued concourse of people."" Wonder-working Providence in New England," 1654."The first settlers came from England, and were of the middle rank, and chiefly Friends.* * * In early times weddings were held as festivals, probably in imitation of such a prac- tice in England.Relations, friends, and neighbors were generally invited, sometimes to the amount of one or two hundred.* * * They frequently met again next day ; and being mostly young people, and from under restraint, practised social plays and sports."Watson's "Account of Buckingham and Solebury" (Pennsylvania; settled about 1682).A MAJOEITY of the games of children are played with rhymed formulas, which have been handed down from generation to generation.These we have collected in part from the children themselves, in greater part from persons of mature age who remember the usages of their youth ; for this collection represents an expiring custom.The vine of oral tradition, of popular poetry, which for a thousand years has twined and bloomed on English soil, in other days enriching with color and fragrance equally the castle and the cottage, is perishing at the roots ; its prouder branches have long since been blasted, and children's song, its humble but longest- flowering offshoot, will soon have shared their fate.It proves upon examination that these childish usages of play are almost * Boston.1 2Games and Songs of American Children.entirely of old English origin.A few games, it is true, appear to have been lately imported from England or Ireland, or borrowed from the French or the German ; but these make np only a small proportion of the whole.Many of the rounds still common in our cities, judging from their incoherence and rudeness, might be supposed inventions of " Arabs of the streets;" but these invariably prove to be mere corruptions of songs long familiar on American soil.The influence of print is here practically nothing; and a rhyme used in the sports of American children almost always varies from the form of the same game in Great Britain, when such now exists.There are quarters of the great city of New York in which one hears the dialect, and meets the faces, of Cork or Tipperary.But the children of these immigrants attend the public school, that mighty engine of equal- ization ; their language has seldom more than a trace of accent, and they adopt from schoolmates local formulas for games, differing more or less from those which their parents used on the other side of the sea, In other parts of the town, a German may live for years, needing and using in business and social intercourse no tongue but his own, and may return to Europe innocent of any knowledge of the English speech.Children of such residents speak German in their homes, and play with each other the games they have brought with them from the Fatherland.But they all speak English also, are familiar with the songs which American chil- dren sing, and employ these too in their sports.There is no transference from one tongue to another, unless in a few cases, when the barrier of rhyme does not exist.The English-speaking population, which imposes on all new-comers its language, imposes also its traditions, even the tradi- tions of children.A curious inquirer who should set about forming a collection of these rhymes, would naturally look for differences in the tradition of different parts of the Union, would desire to contrast the characteristic amusements of children in the North and in the South, descendants of Puritan and Quaker.In this he would find his expectations disappointed, and for the reason assigned.This lore belongs, in the main, to the day before such distinctions came into existence; it has been maintained with equal perti- nacity, and with small variations, from Canada to the Gulf.Even in districts distinguished by severity of moral doctrines, it does not appear ttfhat any attempt was made to interfere with the liberty of youth.Nowhere have the old sports (often, it is true, in crude rustic forms) beenThe Diffusion and Origin of American Game-Rhymes.3 more generally maintained than in localities famous for Puritanism.Thus, by a natural law of reversion, something of the music, grace, and gayety of an earlier period of unconscious and natural living has been preserved to sweeten the formality, angularity, and tedium of an otherwise beneficial religious movement.It is only within the century that America has become the land of mo- tion and novelty.During the long colonial period, the quiet towns, less in communication with distant settlements than with the mother-country itself, removed from the currents of thought circulating in Europe, were under those conditions in which tradition is most prized and longest main- tained.The old English lore in its higher branches, the ballad and the tale, already belonging to the past at the time of the settlement, was only spar- ingly existent among the intelligent class from which America was peo- pled ; but such as they did bring with them was retained.Besides, the greater simplicity and freedom of American life caused, as it would seem, these childish amusements to be kept up by intelligent and culti- vated families after the corresponding class in England had frowned them down as too promiscuous and informal.But it is among families with the greatest claims to social respectability that our rhymes have, in gen- eral, been best preserved.During the time of which we are writing, independent local usages sprang up, so that each town had oftentimes its own formulas and names for children's sports ; but these were, after all, only selections from a common stock, one place retaining one part, another another, of the old tradition.The Diffusion and Origin of American Game-Rhymes. 5We comprehend how deeply mediaeval religious conceptions affected the life of the time, when we see that allusions to those beliefs are still concealed in the playing of children.We find that the tests which the soul, escaped from the body, had, as it was supposed, to undergo the scales of St. Michael, the keys of St. Peter, and the perpetual warfare of angels and devils over departed souls were familiarly represented and dramatized in the sports of infants.*Such allusions have, it is true, been excluded from English games; but that these once abounded with them can be made abundantly evident.We see that chivalric warfare, the building and siege of castles, the march and the charge of armies, equally supplied material for childish mimicry.We learn how, in this manner, the social state and habits of half a thousand years ago unconsciously furnish the amusement of youth, when the faith and fashion of the ancient day is no longer intelligible to their elders.It will be obvious that many of the game-rhymes in this collection were not composed by children.They were formerly played, as in many countries they are still played, by young persons of marriageable age, or even by mature men and women.The truth is, that in past centuries all the world, judged by our present standard, seems to have been a little childish.The rnaids of honor of Queen Elizabeth's day, if we may credit the poets, were devoted to the game of tag,f and conceived it a waste of time to pass in idleness hours which might be employed in that pleasure, with which Diana and her nymphs were supposed to amuse themselves.Froissart describes the court of France as amusing itself with sports fa- miliar to his own childhood; and the Spectator speaks of the fashionable ladies of London as occupied with a game which is represented in this series.^;We need not, however, go to remote times or lands for illustration which is supplied by New England country towns of a generation since.In these, dancing, under that name, was little practised; it was confined to one or two balls in the course of the year on such occasions as the Fourth of July, lasting into the morning hours.At other times, the amusement of young people at their gatherings was "playing games."These games generally resulted in forfeits, to be redeemed by kissing, in every possible variety of position and method.Many of these games were rounds; but as they were not called dances, and as mankind pays more attention to words than things, the religious conscience of the community, which ob- * See Nos.150-153.\ Barley-break.See No. 101.\ No. 90.jected to dancing, took no alarm.Such were the pleasures of young men and women from sixteen to twenty-five years of age.Nor were the par- ticipants mere rustics; many of them could boast as good blood, as careful breeding, and as much intelligence, as any in the land.Neither was the morality or sensitiveness of the young women of that day in any respect inferior

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