Word of the year

A book that changed my way of looking at the world was The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. It showed how playground rhymes and games were handed down to new generations without direct involvement of grown-ups. Iona Opie, one half with her husband, Peter, of the team that brought out the book in 1959, died this year, aged 94. In their research, they built up the world’s biggest private collection of children’s books, now in the Bodleian Library. I remember the thrill of finding duplicates, with their bookplate, in the Charing Cross Road 30 years ago.

Children, with their independent culture, can parody things from the adult world. One rhyme that stayed in my memory had been inspired by three things: Mitch Miller’s hit recording from 1955 of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, the James Stewart film The Man from Laramie, from the same year, and Disney’s 1956 Davy Crockett film.

The Yellow Rose of Texas and the Man from Laramie
Went down to Davy Crockett’s to have a cup of tea;
The tea was so delicious, they had another cup,
And poor old Davy Crockett had to do the washing up.