ABSTRACT
The Opies posited a ‘thriving, unselfconscious culture’ and demonstrated this by describing the widespread use of children’s lore – the songs, rhymes and games – and its continuity and uniformity over time. The Opies recognized that singing games were everywhere, ‘in school playgrounds, in front gardens and cul-de-sacs, in the back lanes of northern cities, and on the grass islands of housing estates’. The Opies touched on the social functions of the rhymes and singing games but were cultural theorists. The boys, on the hand, seemed to be using the pop songs much more as a way of creating solidarity between themselves, in opposition to the different tradition of their classroom. The thread that ran through all of my examples was performance: the songs were there to be acted out and presented to others, a part of an identifiable oral tradition.
