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The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (NYRB Classics)
 
 
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The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (NYRB Classics) (Paperback)

by Peter Opie (Author), Iona Opie (Author) "THE scraps of lore which children learn from each other are at once more real, more immediately serviceable, and more vastly entertaining to them than..." (more)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Customers buy this book with Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking v. 1 by Iona Opie

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (NYRB Classics) + Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking v. 1
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Product details

  • Paperback: 488 pages
  • Publisher: New York Review Books; New Ed edition (1 April 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0940322692
  • ISBN-13: 978-0940322691
  • Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 12.2 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 122,086 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Synopsis

First published in 1959, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called 'the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out.'
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THE scraps of lore which children learn from each other are at once more real, more immediately serviceable, and more vastly entertaining to them than anything which they learn from grown-ups. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (NYRB Classics) 5.0 out of 5 stars (3)
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5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars forgotten games, 11 Mar 2006
By Ms. V. W. Mitchell "-T08Y-" (U.K.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book brings back all the memories of childhood and school playgrounds. Remember the one about Adam and Eve and Nip-me-Well or any other version, well they are all in there. The Opie's went around the UK in the 1950's collecting rhymes, games, riddles - all the little bits of speech that we as adults forget. As well as being an anthology, the authors provide an insight to the history of these games as well as some discussion as to the ways the children use them - obviously rhymes can be used to tease as well as please. Readers of today should also be aware that this book was written in the 1950's and as such contains both out of date material, and perhaps somewhat controversial jokes. Overall, however, this book is a gem.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A classic record of childhood culture, 9 Oct 2009
By Mr. Peter Biddlecombe "peterbiddlecombe" (Bucks, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
I have fond memories of reading this book as a middle-class Home Counties teenager and feeling jealous of the fun had by working class kids with some of the japes described here. Back in the 1950s most kids had no television and formed their own culture. Iona and Peter Opie recorded it using thorough methods but produced a very entertaining book, with little gems on every page and much of the information direct from the children, with occasional wisely scholarly notes from the Opies - a mocking rhyme about a chemistry teacher is "a direct transmogrification of traditional lines spoken of old by the yuletide mummers". Here are some samples from random page openings:

The sausage is a cunning bird
With feathers long and wavy;
It swims about the frying pan
And makes its nest in gravy
Boy, 12, Newcastle upon Tyne (in Nonsense Rhymes in the Just for fun chapter)

Underneath the spreading chestnut tree
Mr. Chamberlain said to me,
If you want to get your gas-mask free,
Join the blinking A.R.P.
(in the Topical Rhymes chapter relating to events of 1938, but "fourteen years later this verse was re-collected from girls in Aberdeen [...] [who] had not been born when the Munich pact was signed".

'When you play "Ring the bell,Susie" you tie a piece of string to one woman's bell and the other end to another woman's door handle and then you ring the woman's bell that has the piece of string on the handle and then you hide. When she opens the door it rings the womans bell and when she opens her door she shuts the other woman's door then she opens her door it rings the womans bell then she opens her door it shuts the other womans door and it goes on like that for a long time.' (description by a 12-year old in the Pranks chaper)
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5.0 out of 5 stars THE LORE AND LANGUAGE OF SCHOOLCHILDREN, 8 Sep 2009
By Mr. D. J. WESTON "norman knight" (Derby,England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Because I'm making a study of Childhood, I find a lot of interesting information in this book, the only question I keep posing myself,is whether I should just select chapters when I need them rather than starting at the beginning of the book and following through to the end.
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