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January 2, 2006 8:19 PM Subscribe
We were discussing the source of playground rhymes/mythology/logic. Is there an example of a piece of nationally or internationally popular playground lore we can trace to a specific author?
Here's an Iona Opie link.
Another thought: then there's parodies. Such as "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, etc." Though it might not be what you're looking for, certainly the song Jingle Bells has an original author: James Pierpoint, 1857, and the parody featuring Batman could only have come into existence after the creation of that character (1939). Tracing the first appearance of the Batman parody would be quite a job (were there earlier parodies? Who might have collected them? Newspaper accounts? Kids' magazines?) -- and I've now heard several variants differing from the one I grew up with. So, you've got yourself an interesting and complicated topic here.
Must sleep now. Metafilter: Please stop being interesting!
posted by Miko at 9:22 PM on January 2, 2006
Another thought: then there's parodies. Such as "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, etc." Though it might not be what you're looking for, certainly the song Jingle Bells has an original author: James Pierpoint, 1857, and the parody featuring Batman could only have come into existence after the creation of that character (1939). Tracing the first appearance of the Batman parody would be quite a job (were there earlier parodies? Who might have collected them? Newspaper accounts? Kids' magazines?) -- and I've now heard several variants differing from the one I grew up with. So, you've got yourself an interesting and complicated topic here.
Must sleep now. Metafilter: Please stop being interesting!
posted by Miko at 9:22 PM on January 2, 2006
World Wide Words has a fun discussion of possible origins for the tag wording Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free (and variants). And there's more on it here.
Hide and seek related: My friends and I picked up several phrases from Schoolhouse Rock's "Ready Or Not, Here I Come", aka the "counting by five" rhyme. Phrases we incorporated into our hide and seek games included "Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie, who's not ready, holler 'I'!" and "Four quarters make a dollar, I didn't hear anyone holler, here I come!"
posted by GaelFC at 10:14 PM on January 2, 2006
Hide and seek related: My friends and I picked up several phrases from Schoolhouse Rock's "Ready Or Not, Here I Come", aka the "counting by five" rhyme. Phrases we incorporated into our hide and seek games included "Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie, who's not ready, holler 'I'!" and "Four quarters make a dollar, I didn't hear anyone holler, here I come!"
posted by GaelFC at 10:14 PM on January 2, 2006
Best answer: The book you want is Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (first published in 1959; reprinted by NYRB Classics in 1991 in an inexpensive paperback edition, still in print as far as I know). Mrs Opie actually listened to the children -- i.e. she went round from school to school, collecting the songs and chants that the children were singing in the playgrounds -- which gives her book a unique authority. There's an interesting review of the book by Philip Larkin (reprinted in Required Writing) in which he draws attention to the extraordinary persistence of a lot of playground rhymes. It seems scarcely believable, but apparently some children in the 1950s were still singing songs about 'Boney' (i.e. Napoleon).
I don't, unfortunately, have a copy of the book on my shelves; but I do have the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, also by the Opies, which covers some of the same ground. For example, they quote a playground rhyme which they'd heard in the 1940s: "Hokey pokey, whisky, thum, How d'you like potatoes done? Boiled in whisky, boiled in rum, Says the King of the Cannibal Islands." This is a half-remembered version of a popular comic song called 'The King of the Cannibal Islands', written by A.W. Humphreys circa 1830. So there you have an example of a playground song that can be traced back to a specific author -- and that was still being sung by children more than a hundred years after its first performance.
The Opies were an amazing couple -- they were among the first people to grasp the historical importance of children's literature (their superb collection of children's books is now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford) -- and their son Robert Opie was the first person to grasp the historical importance of advertising and packaging (see his collection here), an interesting example of the collecting habit being passed down from one generation to another, just like those playground rhymes. Most of the period films of the last twenty years (Merchant Ivory et al) have relied on ephemera from Robert Opie's collection to create a convincing illusion of historical authenticity.
posted by verstegan at 3:23 AM on January 3, 2006
I don't, unfortunately, have a copy of the book on my shelves; but I do have the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, also by the Opies, which covers some of the same ground. For example, they quote a playground rhyme which they'd heard in the 1940s: "Hokey pokey, whisky, thum, How d'you like potatoes done? Boiled in whisky, boiled in rum, Says the King of the Cannibal Islands." This is a half-remembered version of a popular comic song called 'The King of the Cannibal Islands', written by A.W. Humphreys circa 1830. So there you have an example of a playground song that can be traced back to a specific author -- and that was still being sung by children more than a hundred years after its first performance.
The Opies were an amazing couple -- they were among the first people to grasp the historical importance of children's literature (their superb collection of children's books is now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford) -- and their son Robert Opie was the first person to grasp the historical importance of advertising and packaging (see his collection here), an interesting example of the collecting habit being passed down from one generation to another, just like those playground rhymes. Most of the period films of the last twenty years (Merchant Ivory et al) have relied on ephemera from Robert Opie's collection to create a convincing illusion of historical authenticity.
posted by verstegan at 3:23 AM on January 3, 2006
Another recommendation for The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren.
posted by quiet at 4:25 AM on January 3, 2006
posted by quiet at 4:25 AM on January 3, 2006
Another recommendation for the Opies! The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes and the Lore and Language of Schoolchildren are both fantastic. Many of the accounts of conversations with children had me laughing out loud -- the "out of the mouths of babes" phenomenon. Children are also quite cruel, and it's interesting to see how their savagery plays out (literally).
See also Treasures of Childhood: Books, Toys, and Games from the Opie Collection for a glance at the ephemera verstegan recommends...
posted by mdiskin at 5:57 AM on January 3, 2006
See also Treasures of Childhood: Books, Toys, and Games from the Opie Collection for a glance at the ephemera verstegan recommends...
posted by mdiskin at 5:57 AM on January 3, 2006
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This is a huge, huge topic. Short answer: I can't think of many off the top of my head. Most folklorists spend more time on how behaviors are transmitted than on the problem of original authorship. That's why when you collect a new piece of folklore, you refer to the source as an 'informant' rather than an author. In the past, many folklorists found that informants would sometimes claim authorship, but the claim would be proven false when pre-existing versions or distant geographic variants were later discovered. Authorship can be a scholarly bottomless pit, in which you dig and dig and never find an answer. On the other hand, sometimes you find gold. In folk music, people have traced ballads collected in hundreds of variants to a single three-hundred-year-old broadside -- but such good luck and clear authorship is exceedingly rare.
Another problem is that something from a single source probably originates in commercial mass media, reducing its credibility as a genuine 'folk' expression. However, transmission of this type of meme can certainly follow models of folk transmission. One such example: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun." This rhythmic McDonald's commercial has enjoyed a long playground life as a jumprope rhyme and a clapping game, even though most kids today can't remember the original commercial.
Admittedly, some of the things that we consider most 'folky' today started out as someone's intellectual property.
I wish I could stay and find links and discuss this all night, since it's one of my passions, but I have to sleep.
Check out resources in Children's Folklore. Here's the American Folklore Society's page on children's lore. Wikipedia's page on Children's Street Culture is kind of good. It references the Opies, who pioneered research and theory on children's lore and play. Iona Opie did an incredible amount of work collecting nursery rhymes and other children's rhymes; I don't know offhand if any can be traced to a specific author, but if you poke around in her materials, you might find something.
Interesting question -- sorry I don't have a specific answer, but even if a few turn up they will remain the exception in children's lore, not the rule.
posted by Miko at 9:14 PM on January 2, 2006 [1 favorite]