Games children play

I spent most of Sunday afternoon in the Upper Barrakka Gardens, studying dynamics. I needed a quiet place to work (and I get embarrassed spending more than an hour working in McDonalds) and it was great.

At one point, this mother came along with her three girls. They looked like they were very close together in age, say 9, 10 and 11. The older girl was quite quiet, but the younger two were having a blast performing dance rountines while singing Seven Degrees and other Maltese pop songs.

They also spent a fair about of time taunting each other, and I was sitting there thinking, if us three were ANYTHING like these three, then my poor mother deserves a medal!

Anyway they did eventually play nicely with each other, and their game of choice was "Oranges and Lemons". My mother had taught it to us and I also remember playing it in the playground at school. I had written about it a while ago and I got a surprising number of hits - looks like I wasn't the only person who was curious about the actual words.

I noticed that the three sisters were singing a highly-altered version of the song. Playground games inevitably evolve as the words and actions are passed down from one generation of children to another, especially when you consider that in a primary school, you get an entire population turnover in just six or seven years. I read a book about playground games a few months ago and it was fascinating.

Anyway, I copied down the words that I heard in the gardens, and here's a little comparative sociology for you...

Oranges and lemons, the best to/of Saint *mumbled*
I owe you my father/baby
When should I pay you?
Tomorrow is the next day
Chippy chop
Chippy chop
The last one stops!

Questions asked:

      Pupa jew pushchair?
      Go Mobile jew pushchair?
      Ċirasa jew dulliegħa?
      Granita tal-lumi jew papra?

They didn't sing the proper melody, but chanted instead. You couldn't fit their abbreviated version to the melody anyway, lol.

I thought it was interesting that they sometimes sang "to" and sometimes "of", and likewise with "father" and "baby". I would assume that "father" made its way into the rhyme because modern children don't know what a farthing is. I tried to hear what they were saying instead of "Clemens", but couldn't catch it at all. I think maybe they mumble it because they're not sure what it's supposed to be.

I seem to remember the "chippy chop" from the playground too... it's been too long, lol.

The questions that were asked instead of the standard "Oranges or Lemons?" were also interesting - the girls seemed to pick two options at random, but from a limited set. For instance, the "granita tal-lumi" was used quite a lot, but never a granita of any other flavour. It was also interesting to notice how they incorporating "Go Mobile" into their game - I imagine that it started out as "Go Mobile or Vodafone?".

Anyway, just thought that was cool.

Other singing/chanting games that I remember playing in primary school are "Under the Rainbow", "A sailor went to sea, sea, sea", "Grandma, grandma, sick in bed" and sam-makeosso (my favourite clapping game). We also played hopscotch, bebbuxu (spiral hopscotch), french skipping (jumping over elastic), catch, and hide-and-seek.

The coolest game for me was our modified version of rounders, which we played with a tennis-ball and a very old wooden bat from the games box, and no fielders - the bowler had to run after the ball, and we ALWAYS played it in the same place, a space about six metres wide between two buildings. This meant the bowler had a pretty good chance of getting the ball before the batter managed to get around all the bases.

My favourite way to spend Break, though, was climbing the very old and very large carob tree in a field at the edge of the school property that we were allowed to play in during the last few years that I was in primary school. I mapped out an obstacle course around the tree's branches, and my friends and I would race through it, jumping from branch to branch as fast as we could.

My 9-year-old self had an infinite capacity for mischief, heheheh.

Comments

[Hsejjes]

I remember playing in my School ground during break (overlooked by those fierce nuns!!) that game using string or elastic which you wrap around your fingers. Do you remember it? You had to try to transfer it from your friend's hands to yours. And do you remember playing 'laxtuwa' as we used to say? We had this massive piece of elastic and everyone jumped over it as high as possible.....or are all these games too antiquated to remember? Probably children nowadays don't even know what I am talking about....:((

[MaltaGirl]

Mostly the nuns left us to our own devices :-)

We (my sisters and I) call the transferring-elastic-between-hands game Cat's Cradle, and I didn't play it much at school because I never got the hang of it. Now I can do it OK but Little Sis is better than me :-)

"Laxtuwa" is what I called "French Skipping" above. I forget what we actually called it, I don't think we ever had a proper name for it. The girls who got elastic from their mothers were always popular :-) There was one girl who was British and came to our school in fifth grade, and she sparked a renewed interest in the game by teaching us the rhyme "England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, inside, outside, inside, on". I was always rubbish at the game because I never got above knee-high (my excuse is that I was one of the shortest girls in the class, lol).

Later when I started working with kids, I wanted a rhyme that was in Maltese (I work with Maltese-speaking kids) and came up with "Malta, Għawdex, Filfla, Kemmuna, ġewwa, barra, ġewwa, fuqha".

Don't worry, the games are alive and well ;-)

[Athena]

Eh we used to play "lasktuwa" as well. Inevitably, I ended up with various bumps and bruises (I've always been a very graceful person). But my favourite game happened in my gramps's beloved yard... the one with all the plants that were SUCH great targets for skittles... Apparently my mum used to do the same as a child, looks like some things are just meant to be inherited lol.

I do miss playground games in a way... pulizija u hallelin (excellent opportunity to accidentally beat up the nasty boys), all the clapping games (wonderful for breaking my dad's sanity), hula hoops, skipping ropes. Looks like we were able to keep ourselves amused without the use of computers and playstations! My favourite indoor game involved a huge box of leftover cloth (at the time dad worked in a textile factory and I'd beg for the leftovers they were going to throw away), bits and bobs from my aunt's 80s costume jewellery, a pair of shoes with high heels, and off I went. I was in turn a princess, queen, cowgirl etc etc etc. And when my uncle put on music on the record player, I'd pretend I was My Fair Lady, or Julie Andrews or Mary Poppins or the nanny from the King and I:-) Ths used to keep me amused for hours on end. And my ultimate favourite hobby was to curl up in a quiet corner with a book.

Btw Maltagirl, an excellent place to work is St James cafeteria, esp sitting outside. I've been known to spend long hours there (refilling my drink imma ghax otherwise I'd feel guilty) and I never got thrown out:-)

[MaltaGirl]

Middle Sis and I grew up like twins, so most of my games at home involved the two of us getting up to mischief. And when Little Sis came along a few years later, well... heheheh... she still hasn't forgiven us for some of the things we made her do!

Our favourite indoor game was to get all our playmobile men/women/children, organise them into families, create a village, and invent adventures for them. One plot that we repeated a lot involved a child getting lost up on a mountain (the chest of drawers) and the other villagers mounting a search-and-rescue operation. Between playmobile and lego and My Little Pony, we were never at a loss :-)

Outside, we rollerskated (in the days before rollerblades, lol), and at our first house there was this smooth area outside where we played roller-hockey for hours in the evenings, using old plastic tennis rackets and a tennis ball.

I was a bookworm too :-) and that's probably where some of our playmobile plots came from, lol.

We didn't really have TV until I was nine, and I'm really glad about that - it pains me to see children who don't know how to use their imagination to amuse themselves.

Thanks for the tip about St. James! :-D

[Athena]

Hopefully my baby brother is too busy to read this... lol... but when he was still shorter than me and thus an easy target, I'd tie him a round a chair (we'd be playing Cowboys and Indians) and... just leave him there, until his screams caused maternal attention (and fury) to descend onto me. Then he grew up *real* fast and I had to stop that.

Btw you know what I also adored? Plasticene. Mum had to ban it from home (loooong story involving electricity, an expensive coat and plasticene) but it was never banned from gran's house of course so I kept my stash there:-) I just remembered 'cos I saw some in a toy shop today hehe.

[faħmu]

I used to work a lot in McDs .. or SFC.. or the gardens.. Ah memories.. (listening to Bastjanizi FM now..)

[MaltaGirl]

Athena, what are younger siblings for if not to publicly humiliate? Makes up a bit for all the times us big sisters got blamed for their misdeeds... ;-)

I don't think we ever had much plasticine around, it always suffered from us not wrapping it up properly. It reminds me of the "Crystal Balloons" craze, do you remember that? The plasticky stuff came in a squeezable tube, with a mouthpiece to blow it into balloons, and you could stick the balloons together... there's a shop in Valletta that still sells it!

I worked at the St. James cafe yesterday, by the way, you were right, it's a great place. Tourist prices, but hey. I was hungry so I had a BLT, and it must have been the fanciest BLT I have ever had; the coleslaw on the side was surrounded by six carefully-placed crisps, lol. Tasted really good.

Faħmu, are you trying to win another trip? ;-)