Summary

Game type: 'Oliver Twist' (ball game), 'Silver top taxi...' (counting-out rhyme)
Alternative types: games with actions, ball-bouncing rhymes, language play

Handwritten description of the ball game 'Oliver Twist' and a transcription of a counting-out rhyme compiled by Joyce Aghan, a student at Errol Street Primary School, for Dr Dorothy Howard on 25 August 1954. To play 'Oliver Twister', Aghan writes that a ball and wall are required. She explains that players throw the ball against the wall whilst reciting a rhyme and performing increasingly difficult physical actions before the ball returns. Aghan has transcribed the jingle 'Twinkle twinkle little star'; however, it has been crossed out. Below this jingle, she has copied out the following counting-out rhyme: 'Silver top taxi one, two, three / Silver top taxi your [sic] not He'.

One of a collection of letters describing a children's game 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 blue ink on lined paper. Features text written on one side of page.

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