Children's Games with Things

Concluding a trilogy of books on children's games, this is a comprehensive study of the nature of children's play. Following "Children's Games in Street and Playground" (1969), and "The Singing Game" (1985), and based on the surveys of the 1950s to 1970s, the present volume deals with children's games that use equipment of one kind or another, such as marbles, fivestones, skipping and ball-bouncing, and describes in fascinating detail the objects used, the rules of play, the accompanying rhymes and chants, and the history of the games from their earliest appearance. In this volume it has been possible to put traditional games into a wider social context, to show that many of them were once adult amusements, and to trace the varying attitudes towards them over the past 300 years, from pedagogical disapproval, to legal suppression, to the sentimental nostalgia of the present day. Related topics such as "do games come in seasons?", and "are the games really disappearing?" are also covered. Games have a rich language of their own.
Marbles terms (bosser, cannons, fulking, kell, smugs), the names and rules of fivestones (chucks, dandies, gobs, ducks in the pond and flydob scatsie), the surreal verses chanted by the girls, about a lady on a mountain, or a Little Fatty Doctor whose wife can't eat fish, are all part of a world of play into which children can escape. "Children's Games with Things" is an evocation of that world, and a reminder of the need for children to play their own games under their own jurisdiction. This book is intended for general readers interested in history of children's games, social historians, sociologists, teachers, educationalists, folklorists, and parents.