Summary

Game name (and type): 'Donkey' (ball game)
Alternative type: word games

Handwritten description of the ball game 'Donkey' written for Dr Dorothy Howard by Julie Hingston, a student at Double View Government Primary School, on 24 March 1955. Hingston describes 'Donkey' as a game requiring a ball and some chalk. She writes that it is usually played on a road by four players aged between five and fifteen. A large circle is drawn on the road, which is divided into quarters. Each player is allocated a square with a number. Hingston does not provide any details about how the game is played; rather, she describes the process in which players are eliminated from the game. She writes that each time a player is caught, they accumulate a letter from the word 'donkey', which is recorded in their quarter. The first player to amass all the letters is out of the game.

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 black ink on lined paper. Features borders ruled in red pencil; text printed on one side only.

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