The Singing Game

by Iona Opie, Peter Opie

Winner of the 1986 Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and a 1987 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize

'a wonderfully rich account of the continuities and transformations of folk memory.'
Guardian

The Singing Game traces the histories of games such as 'Ring a Ring o' Roses', Oranges and Lemons', 'Poor Jenny Is a-Weeping', and many others, and is an exposition both of the workings of folklore, and of the perennial ways of young children when left to play on their own.

Today the singing game is generally looked upon as belonging to the past. Yet, as the Opies have shown, enclaves of little girls - and some boys - are to be found carrying on the tradition. Conservationists by accident, they keep the games adults have discarded, and play them with a witty and improvisatory disrespect.

Each of the 150 games or so, in groups such as 'Matchmaking', Wedding Rings', 'Cushion Dances', and 'Witch Dances', is described in minute historical detail, but also, bluntly and vividly, by its most recent practitioners in playgrounds and backstreets throughout the British Isles.

Illustrations show the singing games being played from the time of antiquity up until the present day; and nearly every game is accompanied by the tune to which it is sung.

Genres: History, Music

521 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Iona Margaret Balfour Archibald was born in Colchester, Essex, England. She was a researcher and writer on folklore and children's street culture. She is considered an authority on children's rhymes, street and playground games and the Mother Goose tradition. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1998 and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999.

The couple met during World War II and married on 2 September 1943. The couple worked together closely, from their home near Farnham, Surrey, conducting primary fieldwork, library research, and interviews of thousands of children. In pursuing the folklore of contemporary childhood they directly recorded rhymes and games in real time as they were being sung, chanted, or played. Working from their home in Alton, Hampshire they collaborated on several celebrated books and produced over 30 works. The couple were jointly awarded the Coote Lake Medal in 1960. The medal is awarded by The Folklore Society "for outstanding research and scholarship".

Speaking in 2010, Iona speaks of working with her husband as being "like two of us in a very small boat and each had an oar and we were trying to row across the Atlantic." and that "[W]e would never discuss ideas verbally except very late at night."

Iona Opie died in 2017.