Jack and Jill always puzzled me =- dont you go down a hill for water?
Sally Evans
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----- Original Message -----
From: "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 4:04 AM
Subject: Re: Some child lore poems
> The Opie's study remains a central reference point: as Mark says ,
> kids pass on to kids, not adults to kids, so you have this sub-world
> of the little, all of which we big ones were once part of, but only
> imperfectly remember.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
> 2008/12/26 Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>:
>> They also recite, and have recited to them, rhymes half a millenium old
>> (think of Jack and Jill--it's a long time since urban children have had
>> to
>> fetch pails of water). Very little if any of this seems to be
>> internalized
>> as prescriptions for adult behavior, as witness the quite casual increase
>> in
>> born out of wedlock children in all social classes and educational
>> levels.
>> Some of those kids are chanting Ken's rhyme, with no selfconsciousness.
>>
>> When Carlos was about eight his mother and I worried that he might be
>> blindsided by some gossip, so we decided to tell him that she and his
>> father
>> had not married until Carlos was 2. This had no impact on him whatsoever.
>> Why should it? His mother and I, like half his friends' parents, were
>> living
>> "in sin." The parents of most of the rest were married to a non-parent.
>>
>> Childlore is passed on from child to slightly younger child. It survives
>> because it binds the group, it's fun to recite or sing, and it's a handy
>> marker for rhythmic games, like jump rope.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> At 12:28 PM 12/26/2008, you wrote:
>>>
>>> What's odd is the idea that kids might still be chanting rhymes that
>>> assert such '50s 'values' as love/marriage/baby carriage in immutable
>>> order. At what point do they realize that the world around them
>>> doesn't match?
>>>
>>> Susan H.
>>>
>>> On Dec 26, 2008, at 9:18 AM, Kenneth Wolman wrote:
>>>
>>>> Janet Jackson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> My kids (12 and 10) andn their school friends still chant rhymes.
>>>>> Some the
>>>>> same as I remember from the 70s:
>>>>>
>>>>> [snip]
>>>>> X and Y, sitting in a tree / K.I.S.S.I.N.G.
>>>>
>>>> I thought this was a confined-to-America thing. The one I heard has
>>>> a second line with some interesting social assumptions:
>>>>
>>>> First comes love, then comes marriage
>>>> Then comes X with a baby carriage.
>>>>
>>>> I don't even want to get into the social-sounding stuff here, you
>>>> can do it for yourself.
>>>>
>>>> Ken, from Washougal, Washington
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
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