Summary

Game types: rhymes, skipping-rope rhymes, counting-out rhymes, autograph custom albums, poetry
Alternative game type: language play

Article titled 'Onward & Upward with the Arts: Songs of Innocence' co-authored by Dr Dorothy Howard (nee Mills) and Morris Bishop and published by The New Yorker in November 1937. Dr Howard and Bishop discuss the playground rhymes, poems and autograph album annotations of American children, which are often violent, macabre, passionate or brutally humorous in nature. Using examples, the authors demonstrate that satire and criticism, particularly of adult behaviour, are common characteristics of children's rhyming as are taunts, racist comments and mockery of physical traits and the physical world. Dr Howard and Bishop consider the origins of children's rhymes which have been handed down over generations. Whilst personal and generational variations of words and phrases occur, many rhymes have little changed surviving time, distance and translation into different languages. The authors use counting-out rhymes to illustrate the timelessness of children's rhyming by tracing their origins back to early Europe. They conclude by highlighting the significance of sound, music and verbal rhythm in children's rhyming, which they argue is more important than meaning.

One of a collection of publications about children's folklore written by Dr Dorothy Howard. 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. The original fieldwork she collected during this period is held in the Australian Children's Folklore Collection (ACFC) at Museum Victoria and includes index cards, letters and photographs.

Physical Description

Photocopied article with typed black text on paper. Six, unbound pages printed on one side only. Handwritten annotation in black ink on first page. Original contains underlined passages throughout.

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