Evolution of Playground Games - page 2
Keywords: Playground, Games, Playground Games, Folklore, Childhood, Play, School, Child's Play
By elliot5200 on 18/02/2007
Level: Bachelor Honours Degree (BA, BEng, BSc etc)
Page Number: 2 of 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
players to crawl through and free them. However, Melvyn recalls the name of this game as Underground Tig instead and comments that it was not as popular as It, which was a favourite amongst almost everyone.
Stuck in the Mud appears to be a later variant of It and possibly evolved in order to teach children the valuable life-skill of teamwork, as they have got to work together in order to free the people who are ‘stuck in the mud’. Moreover, in Stuck in the Mud, children have to save the ‘goodies’ by freeing caught people, unlike It where caught players join forces with the ‘baddies’ and try to catch the other players.
Another playground game Daniel plays is British Bulldog where players have to run from one end of the playground to the other without a pre-selected player – the ‘bulldog’ – tagging them. Players who are caught join the ‘bulldog’ and try to tag the other players. The last player remaining is allowed to decide who is the ‘bulldog’ for the next game.
However, Melvyn recalls that the game was sometimes played on his street, where children used to have to run across a busy road. Moreover, instead of the ‘bulldog’ simply having to tag the other players, in this version, he would have to physically pin them to the ground for five seconds. This violent version of the game is supported by some of the accounts the Opies (1984: 139) obtained from children: ‘You have only half finished when you have got them down because they kick and punch at everybody in sight.’
The version Melvyn recalls was understandably more popular amongst the clique known as the ‘bullies’, who used it as an excuse to target the smaller children. However, the modern version Daniel describes is played among various cliques. ‘Even the swots sometimes play it’, Daniel adds. Surprisingly, the game is also played as a warm up exercise in his PE lessons, demonstrating its new non-violent status.
British Bulldog is thought by the Opies (1984: 139-42) to be an adaptation of the Victorian game, King Caesar where the ‘King’ plays the equivalent role of the ‘bulldog’ and when he catches a player, has to repeat the phrase, ‘I crown thee, King Caesar’ three times whilst hitting their heads. This usually continues until the caught player agrees to join the ‘King’s’ team. However, players usually ended up with
Last 5 comments…
There have been no comments posted for this article, but you need to register if you want to be the first!