The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passes
from one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference 41
between shcool lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse, learnt
in early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the little listener 42
has grown up, and has children of their own, or even grandchildren. 43
The period between learning a nursery rhyme and transmitting
it may be something from twenty to seventy years. With the playground 44
lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed on within the very hour 45
it is learnt; and in the general, it passes between children of the 46
same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon for the difference in age
between playmates to be more than five years. If therefore, a playground
rhyme can be shown to have been currently for a hundred years, or 47
even just for fifty, it follows that it has been retransmitting over
and over; very possibly it has passed along a chain of two or three 48
hundred young hearers and tellers, and the wonder is that it remains live 49
after so much handling, to let alone that it bears resemblance to the
orginal wording. 50
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