Children’s Folklore Recent Titles in Greenwood Folklore Handbooks Myth: a handbook

FOLKLORE
Folklore involves communication of games, songs, stories, rituals, taunts, and 
other traditional content from one individual to another and from one generation 
to the next. In 1846, William J. Thoms introduced the term 
folklore
in En gland. 
Folklorists in the 1880s and 1890s viewed folklore as survivals of an earlier, 
simpler way of life; now folklorists understand that all people participate in folk 
culture. Barre Toelken, author of 
Th
e Dynamics of Folklore,
states, “All folklore 
participates in a distinctive, dynamic process” (10). Variability distinguishes folk-
lore from academic learning; textbooks stay the same (except when their authors 
prepare new editions), but no one tells a story or describes a game exactly the 
same as someone else does. Reflecting the society in which it circulates, folklore 
expresses people’s interests, needs, and values.
Folk groups—gatherings of two or more individuals—facilitate the transmis-
sion of folklore. Age, religion, ethnicity, occupation, and interests draw people 
together in groups. Children constitute a distinctive age group that shares many 
traditions. Since the 1880s, people have recognized children’s folklore as an im-
portant field of study.
PLAY
Study of play began in the late nineteenth century. G. Stanley Hall, a psy -
cho logist, was one of a number of scholars who believed that play reflected adults’ 
activities of earlier eras. Hall’s recapitulation theory suggests that children’s play 
offers an important guide to the past. This evolutionary approach to understand-
ing children’s behavior shaped the analysis of such early collectors of childlore 
as Lady Alice Bertha Gomme, who interpreted the game London Bridge as an 
enactment of early sacrificial rites (2: 347).
In 1938, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga published his important study 
Homo Ludens
[Playing Man], which identifies play as a key component of culture. 
According to Huizinga, “play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed 

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within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted 
but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of 
tension, joy and the consciousness that it is ‘different’ from ‘ordinary life’ ” (28). 
Since Huizinga identified the human species as 
Homo ludens,
folklore scholars 
have used the word 
ludic
to denote playful activity.
Another significant study by the French scholar Roger Caillois, 
Man, Play, 
and Games
(1961), suggests that play is essentially free, separate, uncertain, un-
productive, rule-bound, and make-believe (9 –10). Caillois divides games into 
four main categories: 
agon
(competition), 
alea
(chance), 
mimicry
(simulation), 
and 
ilinx
(vertigo). He emphasizes the importance of 
paidia
(joyful improvi-
sation), which motivates children to do new and exciting things. Caillois’s 
concepts and terms have suggested productive directions for children’s folklore 
scholarship. The Finnish scholar Marjatta Kalliala, for example, devotes a chap-
ter of 
Play Culture in a Changing World
(2006) to play that fits the ilinx category 
(94 –105).
During the twentieth century, play studies became interdisciplinary and multi-
cultural, with psychologists and anthropologists taking leadership. Jean Piaget’s 
Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood
(1972) introduced stages of play behav-
ior, from early childhood through the age of 12. The Anthropological Associa-
tion for the Study of Play (TAASP) began in the early 1970s under the leadership 
of Alyce Cheska and Brian Sutton-Smith.
Helen B. Schwartzman’s