Back to the future
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This book is a true gem, if you value or are interested in childrens culture. Ewan McVicar has brought together some 900 or so rhymes, poems and songs from a variety of sources, and melded them with his own vast fieldwork collection. He uses sources from earlier authorities in the field, such as Robert Chambers, Alice Gomme, the Opies and the publications of the Rymour Club.
In so doing, he is in a position to show how these verses and shouts have evolved over time. The remarkable resilience and persistence of these streetsongs is demonstrated, by, for example, Betty Grable morphing into Kylie Minogue, but the true wonder is how the oral tradition survives against the might of Nintendo and the rampant iconography of current "heroes".
While for many the major pleasure may be in reading and reminiscing (and smiling!), McVicar shows us his scholastic credentials by offering us links from these songs and rhymes that lets us pursue them into, for example, the canon of work that is the Child Ballad collection: he also tantalises by tracing a song vocable (aleerie) back to Piers Plowman, and can have you racing for your Bible.
This intelligent, sympathetic and compassionate book will fascinate and entertain.
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