CONTENTS OF VOLUME 40 ARTICLES. Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy. A Cross Section of Mexican Life: Mexican Folkways We should like to purchase the following back numbers of the Journal. Please notify the editor if you know where any of these numbers is available. THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLK-LORE VOL. 40. JANUARY-MARCH, 1927 — No. 155. FOLK POETRY AND FOLK CRITICISM, As Illustrated by Cincinnati Children in Their Singing Games and in Their Thoughts about These Games. BY JEAN OLIVE HECK. INTRODUCTION. Children's singing games are now recognized as survivals of folk poetry. Among students of primitive literature, such scholars as Professor Child1 and Professor Gummere2 note this relationship in unmistakable terms. Mr. Newell, Mrs. Gomme1 and others who have specialized in the more restricted field of children's games, suggest ballad-origins for many of these games. In his study of the dramatic element in the popular ballad Professor George Morey Miller summarizes the resemblances which indicate this identity of origin between folk poetry and singinggames in use today among children. The present investigation assumes such a kinship, and seeks through a study of the latter form to arrive at a more intimate knowledge of the conditions under which the earlier form was probably produced. In making this roundabout study of primitive oral criticism, two possible sources of error present themselves, one depending upon our interpretation of the hypothesis and one upon our method of gathering material. In the first place, we may lay undue emphasis upon the similarity between the tastes of the child and the tastes of society in the stage of its development during which oral literature was dominant. Modern children are not, in all respects, representative of folk conditions. The philogenetic theory of psychology, according to which the individual retraces the history of the race, cannot extend itself to that individual's intercourse with other members of the race, since the child is surrounded by beings 1 English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 11 p. 346. 2 Old English Ballads XXX, N. 2. 3 Games and Songs, pp. 9—12. 4 Traditional Games, I, p. 256. 5 The Dramatic Element in the Popular Ballad, pp. 26-32. |