Nursery Rhymes and Children's Games (1889 and 1896)
Plays and Games for Little Folks was written by Josephine Pollard and published by the McLoughlin Bros. in 1889 in New York. This book provides children with different activities, including rules and instructions for playing games. Included in this book are games, songs, and activities for all types of children, depending on their interests and activity level. The title page defines the contents as “Sports of all sorts, fireside fun and singing games.” Both the front and back cover of this book are illustrated with images of children and aspects of nature, helping communicate that this book is for children.
Many of the games found in this book have the same titles as games that children in modern society play. After looking at the rules of these games, however, the only concrete similarities found between these games from the 1800s and society today is their title. An example of this difference can be seen through the game “Hide and Seek.” In society today, it is played when a group of children hide and one person comes to find them -- which is quite different from the way in which this book instructs children in how to play this game.
In this book the game “Hide and Seek” involves a physical object being hidden rather than the people hiding themselves, and these people will give clues to the “seeker” with the terms “hot” and “cold” in regards to their proximity to the hidden object. This version of “Hide and Seek” can be compared to, or can be argued to be the same, as the game called “Hot and Cold” in today’s society. While the titles of these two games are not the same, the concept of “Hide and Seek” from this book and “Hot and Cold” are pretty much the same thing, showing that even though over a hundred years have passed and the toys that are available are significantly different between these generations of children, the physical games that they play are still the same.
Illustrations are plentiful throughout this book, most of which focuses on nature and children playing outside. Different types of flowers and vines enclose the titles throughout most pages, and images of the outlines of children playing are found throughout the book. Images of vases with flowers and individual flowers can also be seen. These illustrations highlight how children of this time period spent a large portion of their time playing games outside. This overarching idea that children mainly played outside does not entirely carry over into society today; development of technology and the ability to access technology such as video games and television has decreased the amount of time children spend outside and the types of games that are being played.
Mother Play and Nursery Songs
Mother Play and Nursery Songs, originally written in German by Friedrich Froebel, was translated to English and published in Boston, MA, by Lee and Shepard Publishers in 1896. This book is a collection of nursery songs, complete with music and “facsimilies of over fifty engravings from the author’s edition” (title page). The Rare Book Room’s edition is unique because of the overwhelming amount of marginalia added by at least one previous owner in pencil and pen. Unfortunately, the marginalia does not include any provenance information, but the information recorded includes a translation of the title into German, publishing information of the original German edition, the history of the book, and a commentary analyzing the nursery songs.
Each page is rife with commentary from a previous owner, to the point that some blank pages are completely filled with faded cursive. Throughout the book, much of the commentary is on the nursery songs. In regards to the book’s entry of “Pat-a-Cake,” for example, the previous owner has written on the blank page before the rhyme, “O can it be that a higher thought / Lies in this little game of Pat-a-Cake?” (48).
Many of the notes on “Pat-a-Cake” suggest different lessons that might be learned from the song, including punctuality, reverence, and responsibility. While the analysis of nursery rhymes for underlying moral and ethical lessons may be more rare today, people continue to be interested in nursery rhymes, exploring their histories and finding, or possibly assigning, a greater, often more sinister meaning to them. Either way, for centuries, people have been concerned with the lessons children directly and indirectly learn as they grow. Interestingly, Froebel gives a different song named “Pat-a-Cake” instead of the version more popular now. In fact, the former owner records a much more recognizable version of “Pat-a-Cake” on the page before. More research would be needed to discover the origin of the song Froebel gives, or if there were any major changes during the process of translating the work.