At 02:32 20/10/99 +0600, you wrote:
>There is some debate on the veracity of oral traditions
>which have been used to explain the character of artifacts.
>There is always the question of contamination by the spin
>that might exist due to researcher bias or the effect of
>later documents coloring early ideas.
>
>I've seen film clips of girls in many parts of the world
>playing a kind of clapping game, during which they speak
>a rhyme while clapping hands, knees, and the partner's
>hands in rhythm. I know of no written source for these
>bits of poetry; they are, so far as I can tell, a completely
>oral tradition,- even in thoroughly literate cultures.
>
>>
Hi
>From my personal experience, (I used to join in with the girls at school),
the rhymns are passed down exclusively by oral means and there is a core
that change only slightly down the generations with the older children
teaching the younger ones, but also there are transient topical rhymns
which reflect current social trends and interests.
These core rhymns were, according to my Grandmother, the same ones that she
sang when she was young.
The rhythm on the other hand was alway of an iambic nature with some
variations, which I assume was in some way the easiest to recollect and
reproduce time and again.
One variation we did was that we did not clap but had strings of elastic
bands between two people and a third danced in the middle, footing the
bands into patterns whilst singing the rhymns.
I was brought up in a village in East Sussex, England and the time i am
refering to would be 1960-1964 when I was aged 6-10.
Ihope this is of some good to you, but as I 've said before it's only my
personal experience.
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