MOTHERS COULD HELP

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12471, 12 June 1926, Page 16

MOTHERS COULD HELP

There are few prettier sights or sounds in the world than the sight and sound of small children playing a singing game that they all know and love. Grown-ups may study folklore and do all that they can to revive traditional dances, hut the performances that they give, though sometimes interesting, leave us cold. 'lTiey lack naturalness and simple joy. Not by taking pains can any of us recapturo “the tender grace of a dnv tjiqt ia dead,” whether tho day he one in our own childliood or sonic distance back in history. Most of ns can remember playing “Nuts in May” on a sweet-smelling lawn in the summer. Whether modern children amuse themselves in such ways as thi3 is perhaps a little uncertain. Ihe traditional singing games of

, children are not games in the modern '• sense of tho word where the game j ends by one child or one side defin- • itely winning. They are dramatic ; rather than competitive . . . Children are fond of imitating their elders . . . and in some of these games handed down by tradition through many centuricy—we see the germs of old customs long since dead. “Nuts in May.*’ »b is thought, contains a suggestion of marriage by capture. “Donaon Bridge is broken down” represented originally some crisis in the national life at home. i So it may be; the origins of the obi happy nou-competitivo games aro mostly out of sight. There can ho little doubt that children themselves “mado thorn up.” Imitating their elders to-day they are not likely to hit on anything so simple, so free from (be blight of desired success or reward Children used to play as tho birds sing, and for that reason there i* something a little sad about seeing their song-games “in print,”