Summary

Game name (and type): 'Poor old jumbo's dead...' (rope skipping rhyme)
Alternative type: skipping games, language play

Handwritten transcription of a rope skipping rhyme beginning 'Poor old jumbo's dead...' written for Dr Dorothy Howard by Rhonda Hunter, a student at Collier Primary School, in 1955. In a related document (HT 41193), Hunter writes that players slide into the splits at the rhyme's end.

One of a collection of letters describing a children's games written to children's Folklorist Dorothy Howard between 1954 and 1955. Dr Howard came to Australia in 1954-55 as an American Fulbright scholar to study Australian children's folklore. She travelled across Australia for 10 months collecting children's playground rhymes, games, play artefacts, etc. This letter, together with the other original fieldwork collected by Dr Howard during this period, is preserved in the Dorothy Howard Collection manuscript files, part of the Australian Children's Folklore Collection (ACFC), Archive Series 3. The ACFC is an extensive collection documenting children's folklore and related research.

Physical Description

Handwritten game description in pencil on lined paper. Text printed on one side only.

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