Beautifully illustrated throughout, it contains photographs, lithographs, and prints the words to each game as well as the music for many of them footnotes a bibliography a general index and an index of songs, games, and dances. Serving as an exposition of both the workings of folklore and the perennial ways of young children left to play on their own, The Singing Game categorizes over 150 of these games into groups such as 'Matchmaking,' 'Wedding Rings,' 'Cushion Dances,' 'Witch Dances,' 'Calls of Friendship,' 'Eccentric Circles,' 'Buffoonery,' and 'Clapping.' The Opies provide a detailed, historical description of each game, as well as a vivid, firsthand account from one of its most recent practitioners on the playgrounds and backstreets throughout England.ĭemonstrating how the games have evolved over the years, and how they vary from country to country, this book offers a comprehensive, authoritative history of a universal folk genre. The singing game, fashionable amongst young adults in the Middle Ages, frowned upon in the 16th Century, and further suppressed in the 17th Century. This volume, based on thirty years of collecting and research by two pioneers in the field of children's lore and language, presents hundreds of singing and clapping games popular with children since the Middle Ages, including such favorites as 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' 'Lazy Mary Will You Get Up?,' 'Skip to My Lou,' 'The Muffin Man,' and 'Ring a Ring o' Roses.' /rebates/2fSinging-Game-Opie-Iona-Late-Peter2f312010484642fbd&. In this work we present the singing and clapping games that used to be played, or are still played, by children in Great Britain, and set forth as much of their histories as could be discovered.

1st class tracked post to the UK, Airmail tracked worldwide. The book 'The Singing Game' (1985) by Iona and Peter Opie gives the earliest printed version of this song as follows, as found in Mother Gooses Quarto (Boston, 1825): Hogs in the garden, catch em Towser Cows in the corn-field, run boys run Cats in the cream-pot, run girls, run girls Fire on the mountains, run boys run. The singing game by Iona Archibald Opie, 1988, Oxford University Press edition, in English.

The Singing Game by Iona Opie