Scholarship and Approaches 117
French, Danish, Greek, Afrikaans, and Spanish. Most of these variants trace the
life of Susie, a lively and spirited young woman, from
birth through death and the
afterlife. Only the Spanish variants begin with courtship, and only the Australian
variants give Susie a profession. For many young chanters of the “Susie” rhyme,
the courtship line “Ooh, ah, lost my bra” is the most exciting part (119). The text
of one variant including this line is can be found in chapter 3. Arleo summarizes
other scholars’ conclusions regarding the “Susie” game, including Marilyn Jor-
gensen’s observation that handclapping and jump-rope rhymes give girls a chance
to envision their future roles as girlfriends, wives, and mothers ( Jorgensen 63).
Carefully considering linguistic
and cultural factors, as well as the relationship
of the text to music and movement, Arleo concludes that the “Susie” rhyme has
spread from one country to another because it introduces the universal themes of
courtship, marriage, motherhood,
and death in a lighthearted, entertaining way.
Although the rhyme seems long and complex, it is based on “simple repetitive
structures, which emphasize the parallelism between text and music” (130). Arleo
calls for a broader study of the Susie saga that includes other cultures and lan-
guages. He also suggests that children’s folklore research would benefit from further
research that “adopts an international perspective,
in which performance analysis,
focusing on the interactions among text, music and movement, is combined with
cross-cultural and cross-linguistic comparison” (130).
Heather Russell’s study “Play and Friendships in a Multi-Cultural Playground”
(1986) examines games, verbal lore, informal activities,
and friendship patterns
of ethnically diverse children at Hightown Primary School in Melbourne. Rus-
sell asks important questions: “What are the dominant features of playground
culture in a multi-cultural environment? Are there cross-cultural influences in
games in the multi-cultural playground? Are there conflicts which arise from
inter-ethnic tensions, and how are these dealt with? What are the play traditions
of children from different ethnic backgrounds?” (2). Her answers to these ques-
tions reveal the complexity of playground culture.
Some playground games at Hightown “belong” to certain ethnic groups. High-
Jump, for example, belongs to Chinese and Vietnamese children. While Elastics
( jump rope)
belongs to everyone, its most skilled and enthusiastic players are
Chinese and Vietnamese girls (24). Russell notes that children playing marbles
at Hightown accept two styles for shooting: the “Australian” and the “Chinese”
style. Since the Chinese style does not come up in Dorothy Howard’s study of
Australian children’s games or in other more recent collections, it seems that this
shooting style has come to Australian playgrounds from Indo-Asian children’s
play relatively recently (27). Russell’s study suggests that children of different
ethnic backgrounds “should be encouraged to engage in folkloric play” and that
teachers should allow children to choose their own play
activities during lunch-
time and recess (48– 49).
118 Children’s
Folklore
Kathryn Marsh’s essay “It’s Not All Black or White: The Influence of the Media,
the Classroom and Immigrant Groups on Children’s Playground Singing Games”
also examines folklore from a primary school in Australia. On this school’s play-
ground, where teachers encouraged the children to share games from their own
ethnic backgrounds, Marsh recorded a number of interesting interactions, includ-
ing simultaneous performances of “When Susie Was a Baby” and a performance
of
Scissors, Paper, Rock in both Korean and English. She concludes that teaching
strategies in support of intercultural exchange help children from diverse back-
grounds adjust to life at school and find acceptance from their peers. It is encour-
aging to hear that this kind of playground interaction “enables children to ensure
that their play traditions will continue to flourish, despite the dire predictions of
adults to the contrary” (94).
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