No More Learning

To her credit, Lady Alice did not reduce children's folklore to a single
theoretical approach. The games were not merely a survival from a past age.
Nor were the games simply a key to past rituals. Children's folklore was a
living tradition-a link to the past, to be sure, but also a vibrant force in
the present.
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? ? The identification of children's lore with survivals from earlier stages
of cultural development is no longer part of contemporary interpretation.
Now the giant's chanting "Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an English-
man" might be interpreted as the dreaded father-figure. As Alan Dundes says,
"Up in the beanstalk world, there is a cannibalistic giant who often in some
vague way is linked with Jack's father. . . " (Dundes 1980, 41). By exten-
sion, the cannibalistic element could be interpreted as the child's fear of the
father's brutal strength and oral power. 6
Still, while the literal interpretation of child's lore as survival has been
discarded, the fundamental equation between child and savage remains, at
least as a metaphor, in much work on children's folklore. The child has be-
come the savage in our midst. Iona and Peter Opie, in the introduction to
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, remark that "the folklorist and
anthropologist can, without traveling a mile from his door, examine a thriv-
ing unself-conscious culture" which is as unnoticed and untouched by "the
sophisticated world. . . as is the culture of some dwindling aboriginal tribe
living out its helpless existence in the hinterland of a native reserve" (Opie
and Opie 1959, 1-2). Sylvia Ann Grider, in her editorial statement to West-
ern Folklore's special issue on Children's Folklore makes a similar observa-
tion: "In this day of inflated costs and shrinking grants, there is no need for
the folklorist to scour the outback of Australia in search of aborigines, for
all he needs to do is glance into his own apartment complex courtyard or
neighborhood playground to find a cooperative group of informants whose
private worlds are dominated by tradition" (Grider 1980, 162).
Iona and Peter Opie conclude their remarks on the child as the sav-
age in our midst by quoting Douglas Newton: "The world-wide fraternity
of children is the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows
no sign of dying out" (Opie and Opie 1959, 2, quoting Newton). Sylvia
Grider, after suggesting the affinity between the Australian aborigines and
children, denies the savage nature of children: "And these little folks are not
savages either . . . " (Grider 1980, 162). Thus for the Opies, the child is like
the aboriginal in the hinterland. For Grider, the child offers the exotic of the
outback, but has the advantages of not really being savage.
In his discussion of children's riddling, John McDowell notes the "ten-
dency to despise the products of childish cognition. " To recognize the intel-
lectual sophistication of child's lore, McDowell suggests that we borrow from
Claude Levi-Strauss's cerebral savage, "whose primitive speculation repre-
sents another, not a cognitively inferior, science" (McDowell 1979, 144).
"The time may be ripe to turn our humanistic energies to those savages
among us and discover at our very portals the cerebral child, concerned in
2. 8 THE COMPLEXITY OF CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE
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? ? his or her verbal art with complex matters of rationality, logic, sociability,
and aesthetics" (McDowell 1979, 144). In his analysis of a children's rid-
dling session which focuses on the differences between animals and machines,
McDowell suggests that the children "are working through basic anoma-
lies in their cultural apparatus, much as primitives examine apparent con-
tradictions through the logical tools of mythology" (McDowell 1979, 145).
In suggesting the analogy between the cerebral child and the cerebral
savage, McDowell is not stressing the simple nature of children or of primi-
tives. Rather he is stressing the complex nature of the intellectual system,
that the riddles of the child and the mythology of the primitive serve to or-
der their cognitive universe. Even with his recognition of the complexities
in child and primitive lore, McDowell is using the basic equation of cultural
evolutionary theory. The child is equal to the savage. The frame he uses is
Levi-Strauss's: The cerebral child is to the cerebral savage as children's in-
tellectualization is to primitive speculation, as children's riddling is to primi-
tive mythology.
The groundrock of this system is Tylor's. According to Edward
Burnett Tylor, comparisons could be made between groups widely separated
in space and time. This could be done because of one common factor, the
psychic unity of mankind. The results of Tylor's comparative study were
arranged on an evolutionary ladder, from the simplicity of savagery to the
complexity of civilization. L6vi-Strauss and McDowell lay this ladder on its
side and eliminate the notion of progress from simple to complex. Savage
thought is complex; children's thought is complex. But for all three, the com-
mon factor that allows comparison is the same, the intellectual capacity of
humankind. For Tylor, it is psychic unity; for Levi-Strauss, la pense sauvage;
for McDowell, the cerebral child.
In this survey of cultural evolutionary theory, we have gone from the
classic form of the nineteenth century, when it was thought that the savage
state survives in children's folklore, to the twentieth-century equation be-
tween savage and child. Scholars in children's folklore would do well to ex-
amine the assumptions underlying cultural evolutionary theory. The first step
would be to scrutinize the concept of the simple.
It is past time to recognize that children are not simple, nor are soci-
eties simple. The child is a complex individual, not a simple adult, or a link
to the savage past. And the savage past cannot be exemplified by savage
cultures in our midst, except those of our own making. 7
The term savage carries with it the weight of the cultural evolution-
ary theory. The whole world rises on the shoulders of the savage-be it
the Australian aborigine or the African tribesman. Whether used in L&vi-
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? ? Strauss's clever turn-of-phrase, la pensee sauvage-the savage thought or the
wild pansy-or McDowell's offspring of the cerebral savage, the cerebral
child, the term denotes the wild, untamed, uncivilized. This equation between
the child and the savage, whether intended in the literal or the metaphori-
cal sense, is a disservice to the folk group, its culture, and its folklore. What
is needed is a recognition of the complexity and the integrity of cultures and
of children.
The child-as-savage, the child-as-exotic, has also been used as a jus-
tification for studying children's folklore. The reasoning is as follows: There
is no need to go to faraway lands when the exotic is within, in our own
households. This need to justify the study of children's folklore could be
avoided if we simply accept the obvious-that children's folklore is a legiti-
mate and an important area of study.
A major theoretical shift has occurred between the nineteenth and the
twentieth centuries, from a search for origins to a search for meaning. As
we have seen, in the nineteenth-century cultural-evolutionary framework,
children's folklore provided a link with the past. In contemporary ap-
proaches, children's folklore provides a key to understanding the crucial,
unstated elements in a child's life. This stress on meaning is apparent in the
psychological, functional, structural, and symbolic theories.
Martha Wolfenstein's Children's Humor shows just such an attempt
to arrive at the underlying, unconscious meaning of children's jokes. She
anticipates the criticism that she has given undue emphasis to the trivial.
She counters, "But when one hears one child after another repeat these same
apparently trivial witticisms, and sees what value they attach to learning and
telling them, one feels that there is a discrepancy between the intensity
of their interest and the seeming triviality of the content. This gap can be
filled in if we reconstruct the underlying meaning of the joke" (Wolfenstein
1978 [1954], 14). In Wolfenstein's psychological approach, the underly-
ing meaning of the joke is directly related to the basic motive of joking,
"the wish to transform a painful experience and to extract pleasure from
it" (Wolfenstein 1978, 18). This Wolfenstein calls "the wish to joke"
(Wolfenstein 1978, 25).
The release of anxiety through joking is a constant, as Freud has
shown in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, but the joking forms
themselves change according to the developmental stages of the child. It is
Wolfenstein's attempt to correlate the different forms of humor with the dif-
ferent age levels of children that makes her work unique. 8 Wolfenstein fol-
lows the psychoanalytic scheme of emotional development, the Oedipal, la-
tency, and adolescent periods. For example, Wolfenstein discusses verbal play
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? ? in which a child changes the sex or name of another child. A three-year-old
makes a joke by calling a girl a boy, or vice versa (Wolfenstein 1978, 19,
89), and the child of four does the same thing by changing proper names.
These children are playing with verbal ambiguity; underlying this is the ques-
tion about sexual identity and individual identity. As Wolfenstein says, this
joking behavior carries a powerful message, "I change your sex; I change
your name; I change your meaning" (Wolfenstein 1978, 82).
The moron joke cycle, for Wolfenstein, marks the latency period of
children, from six to eleven years. At that age, the children are greatly con-
cerned "with the issue of smartness and dumbness. " The riddles ". . . serve
in part the function of demonstrating that they are smart and the other
fellow, who does not know the answer, is dumb" (Wolfenstein 1978, 20).
This contrasts with the endless fantasies of the Oedipal children and the
artful anecdotes of the adolescent. The joking riddle makes a parody of ques-
tions and answers. As Wolfenstein says, "The question posed is trivial or
absurd; the solution is nonsensical" (Wolfenstein 1978, 94). This is linked
to the concern of the latency period, the child's repressed curiosity about
his/her parents' sexuality (Wolfenstein 1978, 95). This curiosity reveals
itself in the joking riddle: "Beneath this verbal formula is a latent meaning
which has been drastically condensed and disguised. The child values the
joke's concealment of material which he is anxious to repress. He also strenu-
ously denies that the joke has any relation to himself" (Wolfenstein 1978,
138).
In the introduction, Wolfenstein notes that she, at times, ventures on
"not too certain ground" when she relates a frequent theme from psycho-
analytic observation to "other subjects in other circumstances" (Wolfenstein
1978, 18). It is her analysis of the repressed sexual meaning of the moron
jokes which seems so strained. For example, Wolfenstein analyzes one of the
most popular moron jokes: "Why did the moron tiptoe past the medicine
cabinet? Because he didn't want to wake the sleeping pills. " The clue to the
joke's meaning lies in the action of the moron and the function of the pills.
The moron tiptoes and the pills induce sleep. As one child explained to
Wolfenstein, the joke is funny because "sleeping pills put you to sleep. They
don't sleep themselves" (Wolfenstein 1978, 105). She continues: "The same
thing could be said about the parents at night. Thus there is here what we
might call a latent riddle: Why are the parents at night like sleeping pills?
The moron in the joke is a fool because he doesn't know that they put you
to sleep and don't sleep themselves" (Wolfenstein 1978, 105). Wolfenstein
concludes her analysis of this joke by pointing out that the moron might not
be quite such a fool. He is after all tiptoeing around to find out what his
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? ? parents are doing in the night.
While her analysis of this joke is penetrating, it does seem that
Wolfenstein has, under the rubric of the latent riddle, created and analyzed
a different joke from the one initially given. This search for the latent mean-
ing in children's humor takes us on an unnecessarily circuitous path through
the child's world of the subconscious. The children themselves-the very ones
whom Wolfenstein would place in the latency period-provide a much more
direct route to the sexual meaning of their humor through explicit sexual
jokes (see Zumwalt 1976 and Gaignebet 1974). The foregoing is not a dis-
missal of Wolfenstein's work. She has compiled a rich and detailed analysis
of children's humor. And her use of the psychoanalytic approach has given
us access to the hidden meaning of children's folklore, which lies below the
conscious level. As Dundes remarks, hers is "a neglected classic . . . a land-
mark in the study of wit and humor" (Dundes 1978, 8).
While with psychological analysis the intent is to arrive at the hid-
den, subconscious meaning of the folklore, with functional analysis the em-
phasis is on the use of folklore in the social setting. Malinowski, in his writ-
ings on functionalism, emphasized the transformation of the biological in-
dividual into the cultural individual. Part of this transformation comes about
through the socialization of the child. Within this theoretical framework,
folklore functions to create a social being, and to reinforce cultural values.
In Shonendan: Adolescent Peer Group Socialization in Rural Japan,
Thomas Johnson provides a detailed description of peer-group socialization.
The Shonendan, a boy's club, is of crucial importance for the boys from the
fourth grade through junior high school. The club provides the center of their
activities and the focus for their interests. To protect the Shonendan from
adult intervention, the boys made it a point "to appear to be doing things
as the adults would wish them to, regardless of what was actually happen-
ing" (Johnson 1975, 253-54). This point is reiterated at every weekly meet-
ing. As Johnson says, the result is that "They have set up a kind of peer group
tyranny enforcing conformity to the boys' perception of the adult social code
for children, and they have done this in the name of freedom from adult in-
terference" (Johnson 1975, 254).
This enforcement of the social order for the good of the whole, for
the good of the Shonendan, perpetuates the values of the community. As a
mark of their success in the enforcement of order and the perpetuation of
values, the members of the Shonendan learn how to break the rules and avoid
detection: "While there is certainly behavior of which the adults would dis-
approve-some drinking, sexual explorations, etc. -the boys themselves
recognize that these are disapproved actions and are very careful to conceal
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? ? them from the adults" (Johnson 1975, 254). The leaders guard against ex-
posure by excluding the younger, and therefore less cautious, members from
such covert activity. The Shonendan provides effectively for peer-group so-
cialization, a major function of children's folklore cross-culturally.
The structural approach to folklore examines both surface (morphol-
ogy) and underlying (deep) structure. The attempt is made to find a key to
the meaning of the material in the components of the structure and in their
combination. In Children's Riddling, John McDowell thoroughly examines
both surface and deep structures of riddles. Discussing one surface form,
"What kind of X is a Y? " McDowell suggests that this is a construction of
a system of classification. This surface structure, or morphology, in its es-
sence is based on classification, for it categorizes or types. In the riddle "What
kind of head grows in the garden? " [A head of lettuce], two tokens which
are not generally classified together are brought into relation with one an-
other (McDowell 1979, 68). The descriptive routines of children reflect,
McDowell says, "the scientific discoveries of the children" (McDowell 1979,
65). In their riddles, children can communicate their increasing knowledge
of their world. He lists three categories for these descriptive routines: "what
is-understandings of diagnostic qualities; what has-understandings of
possessed qualities; and what does-understandings of habitual behavior. "
From an examination of the content of the riddle corpus, McDowell
is able to construct a taxonomy for the categories. The taxonomy reveals
the oppositions of culture vs. nature, animate vs. inanimate, mankind vs.
other forms of life, and artifact vs. artifact (McDowell 1979, 104-5). Of
these, McDowell finds the nature-culture theme to be predominant, with the
others ranking below it in importance. McDowell concludes: "The children's
riddling, taken as a single and complete unit of discourse, thus delivers a
cosmos as the children perceive it, placing man in the center of the universe,
exploring his technological capacity, and contrasting him with other signifi-
cant entities in the natural world" (McDowell 1979, 105). By examining the
structure of the riddle, McDowell is able to suggest that riddles both orga-
nize the child's universe as a form of classification and play havoc with the
order by taking the familiar and rendering it strange (McDowell 1979, 87).
An innovative and provocative approach to children's conversation and
play is put forth by Marjorie Harness Goodwin. In "The Serious Side of Jump
Rope: Conversational Practices and Social Organization in the Frame of Play,"
Goodwin examines play activity within the game of jump rope as "continu-
ous with that outside the play frame" (Goodwin 1985, 315). She looks at the
process of negotiation of what is often considered to be set rules. For Goodwin,
play provides an important dimension for serious negotiations.
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? ? In her work on children's conversational activity (1985, 1990),
Goodwin examines, in minute detail, texts of conversational activity. The
transcription symbols indicate overlapping, simultaneous speech, elapsed
time, sound production, and volume. The children speak for themselves in
these scrupulously transcribed tapes. What they tell us, through Goodwin's
elucidation, is of the creation and continuation of social structure through
conversation. In this approach, there can be no arbitrary domain of tradi-
tional play which would be classified as folklore. Instead, Goodwin uses the
terms of Goffman to describe the play frame, "situated activity system" and
"focussed gathering" (Goodwin 1985, 317; Goffman 1961b). Certainly
Goodwin situates the activity within the ethnographic setting and draws out
the complex play of forces, showing what is at stake in a game of jump rope.
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL
Initially, in my work with little girls' folklore, I was concerned with the ideal
little girl as she was represented in the folklore. I found her reflected in the
texts of the jump-rope songs, hand-clapping songs, counting-out rhymes,
taunts, jokes, and catches. She emerged from the pages of my collection,
teased out by symbolic analysis, and she stood before me, the image of the
ideal. I chose to highlight her. Still, beside her stood the real little girl. How
was it that I brought forth the ideal and let the real remain in the back-
ground? First, my analytical lens was focused on structure and symbol. I
viewed folklore as a symbolic code which the children used to organize their
universe. Second, I looked to the content of the folklore as a source for these
symbols. 9 The ideal little girl is present in these selections, as is the mirror
image of the little boy. I will analyze a few selections to draw out the image
of the ideal.
The nature of boys and girls is stated in the following hand-clapping
song:
My mother, your mother
Lives across the street
1617 Mable Street.
Every time they have a fight,
This is what they say:
Boys are rotten,
Made out of cotton.
Girls are dandy,
Made out of candy.
Icka-bocka soda bocka
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? ? Icka-bocka boo.
Icka-bocka soda cracker
Out goes you! '?
This conclusion about the nature of boys and girls-that boys are rotten and
girls are dandy-is given validity by the source, "my mother and your
mother. "
The good little girl and the bad little boy clash in the following jump-
rope song:
Down by the ocean,
Down by the sea,
Johnny broke a bottle,
And he blamed it on me.
I told Ma.
Ma told Pa.
Johnny got a lickin'
So ha, ha, ha!
How many lickins
Did Johnny get?
1,2,3,4,5. . . '"
True to his rotten nature, Johnny has broken a bottle. Then, instead of ac-
cepting the act and its consequences, he blames it on his sister. The little girl
tells Ma. Ma in turn tells Pa. And then Johnny gets it! The little girl is the
innocent one, unwilling to accept the blame cast on her. Instead of direct
action, a verbal or physical fight, the little girl turns to her mother. And ap-
parently the mother accepts without question the little girl's story. Just as
the daughter avoided direct action, so does the mother: She passes the re-
sponsibility to her husband. Her husband, accepting, as his wife did, the son's
guilt and the daughter's innocence, punishes the son without further ques-
tion. The father, in contrast to his wife and daughter, is direct and physical
in his treatment of Johnny: He spanks him. The little girl is vindicated and
she gloats over her victory. She is not satisfied to have Johnny punished. She
must count the lickins, and laugh at the spectacle.
The little girl in "Down by the Ocean" is indirect. She appeals to
someone with more authority for help. By going to her mother, she is prov-
ing herself to be an obedient daughter who respects her parents. She is con-
trasted with her brother, who shows his disrespect for authority by his dou-
bly antisocial act of breaking the bottle and blaming it on his sister.
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? ? In the case of the little Dutch girl in the following hand-clapping song,
a pretty face is at a premium and brings substantial reward:
I am a pretty little Dutch girl,
As pretty, as pretty can be, be, be.
And all the boys in my neighborhood
Are crazy over me, me, me.
My mother wanted peaches,
My father wanted pears.
My father wanted fifty cents
To mend the broken stairs.
My boyfriend gave me peaches.
My boyfriend gave me pears.
My boyfriend gave me fifty cents
To mend the broken stairs.
My boyfriend gave me peaches.
My boyfriend gave me pears.
My boyfriend gave me fifty cents
And kissed me on the stairs. 12
The little Dutch girl attracts the attention of every boy in the neighborhood
for one reason only: She is pretty. Her looks alone supply her family with
their needs, since her faithful boyfriend grants her every wish, just for a kiss
on the stairs. She is definitely dependent on him, however. When a fight
breaks off relations between them, her family is left in need:
My boyfriend gave me peaches.
My boyfriend gave me pears.
My boyfriend gave me fifty cents,
And threw me down the stairs.
I gave him back the peaches.
I gave him back the pears.
I gave him back the fifty cents,
And threw him down the stairs.
My mother needed peaches.
My father needed pears.
My brother needed fifty cents
To buy his underwear!
Since the aid of a boyfriend is an economic necessity, the little girl
36
THE COMPLEXITY OF CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE
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? ? searches diligently for him. In the jump-rope song "Ice Cream Soda," she
jumps to find out his identity:
Ice cream soda.
Delawarie punch.
Tell me the initials
Of your honeybunch.
A, B, C, D. . .
When she misses, she calls out a name that begins with that letter:
Danny, Danny,
Do you love me?
Yes, no, maybe so.
Certainly! 3
In another version of "Ice Cream Soda," the first verse is the same, except
that the name is determined in place of the initial:
Ice cream soda.
Delawarie punch.
Tell me the name
Of your honeybunch.
A, B, C, D. . .
In the second verse, instead of determining whether or not the "honeybunch"
loves the little girl, their marriage is divined:
Danny, Danny,
Will you marry me?
Yes, no maybe so.
Certainly!
It is assumed natural in both versions that the little girl will have a lover.
His existence is not in question, only his initials or his name. Once these have
been established, the question is simply whether or not he loves her, or
whether or not he will marry her. Apparently the man of these jump-rope
songs has an option to love or not to love, to marry or not to marry. For
the little girl, this choice is not available.
When the little girl finds her love, it is likely that she will greet him
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? ? with the kiss that is peppered throughout folklore. This kiss has different
connotations. Sometimes it is a feminine tease; sometimes a precursor to
marriage. "Missed me, missed me! Now you gotta' kiss me! " is called out
to the person who is "it" in a game of tag. The children of the following
taunt find that the kiss holds greater import:
Nancy and Bobby
Sittin' in a tree.
K-i-s-s-i-n-g.
First comes love.
Then comes marriage.
Then comes Nancy with a baby carriage. 14
The little girl's orientation must be directed toward the home, for this
is the center of her activity. Even her address is decided. As my informants
said, "My mother, your mother, lived across the street, 1617 Mable Street. "
This is also rendered, "My mother, your mother, lives across the way, at 514
East Broadway" (Abrahams and Rankin 1980, 154). This leaves no doubt
where the little girl will be found. She is in the home. She will probably be
hanging up the clothes, as in the following counting-out rhyme:
My mother, your mother
Hangin' up the clothes.
My mother punched your mother
Right in the nose.
What color was her blood?
Blue. B-L-U-E spells blue.
And you are not it! 1s
Or maybe she will be drinking coffee or tea, as the little girl is in the fol-
lowing jump-rope rhyme:
I like coffee.
I like tea.
I like Janie
To jump in with me! '6
Part of her work will certainly follow the command:
Wash the dishes.
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? ? Dry the dishes.
Turn the dishes over! 17
When the baby arrives, he must be fed. The method of obtaining food
and preparing it for baby's consumption is a task of divided labor:
Fishy, fishy in the brook.
Daddy catch him on the hook.
Mommy fry him in the pan,
Baby eat him like a man. 1"
Daddy brings the food home, mommy prepares it, and baby eats it. This
chain is continued with baby's eating, for he is urged to "eat him like a man.