One summer during college I got a job as a summer camp counselor (Camp Indian Head, my "tribal" name was Chief Wasted Eagle, but that's another story). I was counselor for the Navajos, the 8-10 year old boys.

One day I eavesdropped while some of the older girls (pre-teens) were teaching the younger ones some nursery rhymes. These were accompanied by elaborate sequential hand gesures, like "patty-cake", but much more complex and elaborate. They had dozens of verses, and the graceful twirling and slapping of their hands was keyed to the stories in the rhymes. Little girl's voices, in rapt concentration, a singsong being transmitted from generation to generation of children. Many of the phrases seemed to be very ancient, and probably dated back to medieval England.

Everyone knows "ring aound the rosy" goes back to the time of the Black Death in the late Middle Ages, but it appears there is an entire repertoire of folk history buried in children's rhymes and games. I asked the girls what some of these words meant, but they did not know. They had just been taught by older girls, and by their sisters. In an unbroken chain back to the beginning of time, now passed on to a new generation of kids. Those pretty little girls are probably all grandmothers now, I wonder if those delightful little chants still survive.

I wonder if this still goes on. Have electronic toys and games destroyed this priceless oral history? I remember from my own youth how we had a sequence of toys, and each toy had its own season. One day everyone would be flying kites, the next we'd be throwing tops, and a month later playing stoop-ball. The girls had jacks, we had marbles. Do kids do this any more?

I don't think anyone even knows how to wind and throw a top these days. Its probably too dangerous for our litigious age.