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

(mushi-ken),
snake beats frog, frog beats slug, and slug beats snake (“Origins 
of Rock, Paper, Scissors”). Early twenty-first-century Japanese teenagers have 
played this game with video cameras, watching each others’ gestures on their 
own screens. This use of technology allows children to play the game at the same 
time no matter how much distance separates them.
Noncompetitive finger games often accompany rhymes or brief narratives. 
One finger game that American children enjoyed playing in the 1950s was “here 
is the church (interlace fingers), here is the steeple (raise one finger). Open the 
doors (spread thumbs, turn hands over) and see all the people!” Some children 
still learn this game, but it has become less common than it once was.
Chalk Diagram Games
One of the oldest games documented by folklorists is Hopscotch or Hoppy, 
once played by Roman soldiers. Children usually play these games on chalk dia-
grams that they have drawn themselves. Alice Bertha Gomme includes 10 Hop-
scotch diagrams in her 
Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland
(1; 224); William Wells Newell includes one of the most common diagrams in 
Games and Songs of American Children.
He notes that New Yorkers call the top 
of the diagram “Pot”; Austrians call it “the Temple,” and Italians call it “the Bell” 
(188). Dorothy Howard’s thorough documentation of Hopscotch games in Aus-
tralia has added to folklorists’ understanding of how the game has developed 
around the world (Darian-Smith and Factor 67–85). Simon J. Bronner’s 
American 
Children’s Folklore
includes an excellent set of Hopscotch diagrams (189 –97).
Skelly, which originated in New York City in the first half of the twentieth 
century, involves shooting bottle caps, poker chips, or other objects into the cen-
ter of a diagram, sometimes called the “skull.” In 
City Play
(1990), Amanda Dar-
gan and Steven Zeitlin explain the dynamics of Skelly caps: “The caps, especially 
when weighted with tar, cork, pennies, melted crayons, orange peels, wax, or al-
most anything, skim nicely along concrete surfaces with the sideways flick of the 
finger—a well-weighted cap can be effective in knocking an opponent’s caps off 
the board” (84). Although Skelly diagrams seldom adorn New York City’s streets 
in the twenty-first century, they often appear at street game revivals.
Running and Chasing Games
Games that involve running and chasing fit numerous categories. Iona and 
Peter Opie’s 
Children’s Games in Street and Playground
devotes separate chapters 

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34 Children’s 
Folklore
to chasing games, such as French Touch and Daddy Whacker; catching games, 
such as Prisoner’s Base; seeking games, such as Hide-and-Seek; hunting games, 
such as Hare and Hounds; racing games, such as Letters and Colours; and exert-
ing games, such as Tug of War and Red Rover. Since it is not possible to describe 
all of these categories in detail, the general term 
running and chasing game
is 
used here.
Tag, usually called Tig or Tiggy in the United Kingdom and former British 
colonies, gives one child the role of “it” or “he.” This child chases the rest of the 
group and eventually touches someone, at which point the newly tagged child 
becomes “it.” Simple reversal of roles and actions makes this game easy for young 
children to play. Variants include Freeze Tag, Puerto-Rican Tag, Octopus Tag, 
and Flashlight Tag in the United States and Tunnel Tig, Aeroplane Tig, Hospital 
Tig, and Toilet Tig in the United Kingdom (Mansfield 25).
In the chasing game Hare and Hounds, the child designated as hare runs away 
to hide; all the rest of the players, called hounds, pursue the hare as quickly as 
they can. Alan Dundes applies structural theory to this game in his essay “On 
Game Morphology,” which identifies an intriguing difference between game 
structure and folktale structure. While the folktale has a one-dimensional plot se-
quence, games like Hare and Hounds have a double structure with different lacks 
and consequences. The hare wants to go home, but if the hounds catch him, he 
loses the game; the hounds want to catch the hare, but if they do not catch him 
before he gets home, they lose the game (337–38). Even though the game has 
a double plot, its intrinsic similarity to the folktale’s structure offers interesting 
possibilities for analysis.