These lines are obviously no older than the 1960’s and may be American. Perhaps, like others, this had a bawdy origin somewhere, or maybe its just the result of childish wit and delight in language.Īlternatively, the last four lines can go: The only other clapping song my daughter came up with is recorded by the Opies under “Less Popular Clapping Songs” without comment (and without the curious first four lines): Meanwhile, Steve Roud, another excellent student of children’s games, provides a version of these last lines collected in London in 1907, only there, its not a lady that comes in, but the devil ! Wherever it came from, the “alligator purse” is a fine improvement in rhythm, even if the meaning remains utterly mysterious. There, however, they sang of “a big black purse”. The first eight lines are identified by the Opies as coming from an early twentieth century bawdy song and the remainder as a game-song of American children from at least the 1920s. Out went the lady with the alligator purse. `Pizza’ said the lady with the alligator purse `Measles’ said the Doctor, `Mumps’ said the Nurse
In came the lady with the alligator purse Clapping games themselves are much older, with records from Britain and the United States over the last one hundred years and more, but they apparently enjoyed a revival in Britain in the 1960’s as this and other American songs arrived.Īnother `song’ my daughter chanted was this : The song is part of what the Opies record as “ I am a pretty Dutch Girl“, which, they say, seems to have arrived in Britain in about 1959 from America and then “spread through the country like wildfire”. The girls (these singing games are mostly performed by girls) stand face to face and clap against each other’s and their own hands in a set pattern in time with the beat of the song – as my daughter demonstrated as best she could, having only an inexpert adult – myself – to clap with. This is a song or chant for a clapping game. “Games”, she said, “You know…” It was not until I gave her an example – from the Opie’s book “The Singing Game” – that she came up with the following:
I asked my eight-year-old daughter what she and her friends sang or played together at school in the playground, but this was evidently not a sufficiently sensible or interesting question. The success of their first book – “The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren” (1959) – or perhaps just the pleasure of watching children play – set the Opies off on a lifetime’s career of observing, collecting and writing about children’s play. Their subject is the world of children’s play – songs, games and rhymes found in street and playground, passed from child to child, a lost world, half remembered, mostly forgotten, and hardly noticed by much too busy and serious adults.
For anyone brought up in an English-speaking playground, the books of Iona and Peter Opie are not to be missed.
0 kommentar(er)
