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

Th
e Games Black Girls Play,
Kyra 
D. Gaunt explains that a cheer, known in some cities as a 
scold
or a 
step,
“names 
individual members, while also signifying their unique group identity” (76). 
Gaunt’s detailed discussion of certain cheers’ history demonstrates the continuity 
and creativity of African American girls’ rhyming traditions.
Azizi Powell, creator of the Web site Cocojams.com, distinguishes “foot 
stomping cheers” from cheerleaders’ cheers at games. Foot-stomping cheers in-
volve standing in a line and taking turns stepping forward to do a solo; cheer-
leaders at games do fewer solos. Powell suggests that both kinds of cheers borrow 

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32 Children’s 
Folklore
elements from each other and that foot-stomping cheers take material from black 
and Latina dance-style cheerleaders.
GAMES
Imaginative Games
Iona and Peter Opie explain in 
Children’s Games in Street and Playground
that 
imag inative or “pretending” games have a long history; boys took the roles of 
judges and magistrates in ancient Rome, and Flemish children imitated wed-
dings, christenings, and religious processions in the sixteenth century (330 –31). 
Although our knowledge of such games in earlier eras is limited, twentieth-
century studies have proven the breadth of children’s imaginative game play-
ing. The Opies’ study includes the games Mothers and Fathers, School, Road 
Accidents, Horses, Storybook World, War, and Cops and Robbers, as well as 
Fairies and Witches. It also mentions such interesting imitations of current events 
as the Great Train Robbery, based on a famous heist in England in 1963, and 
Assassination, based on the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 
1961 (330 – 44).
Leea Virtanen’s 
Children’s Lore
describes a number of imaginative games played 
by Finnish children (31–33). In Amanda Dargan and Steven Zeitlin’s 
City Play
(1990), New York City children’s enactment of drug dealers’ routines is one of 
many street games. Marc Armitage’s “The Ins and Outs of School Playground 
Play” (2001) analyzes imaginative games played in the United Kingdom (46 –54). 
My own observations of children’s games in New York in the 1990s indicate that 
firefighters, police, teachers, doctors, Native Americans, film and television stars, 
and wild animals have inspired vigorous role-playing by children of elementary-
school age.
Psychologists’ studies offer important insights into the patterns and meaning 
of children’s imaginative play. Selma Fraiberg’s 
Th
 e Magic Years
(1959) explores 
children’s need for imaginative activity in early childhood. One of the best stud-
ies with a bearing on children’s folklore is Jerome L. Singer’s 
Th
 e Child’s World of 
Make-Believe
(1973). Singer distinguishes between high-fantasy children, whose 
play includes many imaginative elements, and low-fantasy children, who have 
less interest in “let’s pretend” games.
Finger Games
Very young children learn finger games such as Peek-a-boo! from their parents 
and other adults. Once children are old enough to go to school, they learn differ-
ent finger games from friends. Some child-taught finger games simply amuse the 
learner, but others serve as routines of victimization.

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De
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One finger game that has traveled around the world is Rock, Paper, Scissors 
( jan ken pon),
which first became popular in nineteenth-century Japan. In this 
game, two fingers representing scissors beat paper (an outstretched hand), paper 
beats rock (a balled-up fist), and rock beats scissors. In the older Slug version