Comments on: Dan Jones At Bethnal Green Library

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 15:28:55 +0000

Lighten up, people! (the folks who were outraged at the nursery lyrics………..) When you re-read many of the Brothers Grimm tales and Mother Goose stories, they are replete with gothic violence. I chuckled about “showing my knickers to the football team”, wish I’d had that kind of moxie.

I can only imagine how much the individual children enjoyed spotting themselves in the mural. That would have felt like immortality! How wonderful. Did the people in the 1560 masterpiece have a similar thrill?

Thanksgiving Day in the Hudson River Valley. Gloomy, and wonderfully cozy. The house full of good baking smells, and holiday music. The beloved tunes, and the ones that make us cringe.

By: Lorelei

Lorelei — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 12:42:28 +0000

I was at primary school in the early ‘60s and many of these rhymes were familiar to me too. This took me right back to playing in my North London school playground. What a lovely jolly picture. It would be foolish to think that children’s lives were trouble free back then, but it feels a more innocent time somehow.

By: Cherub

Cherub — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 12:13:52 +0000

I love the children’s rhymes, they take me back to being a child in the 60s.

By: Bailey Jones

Bailey Jones — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 11:44:14 +0000

A lovely example of social history, beautifully painted.

The rhymes varied from area-to-area, town-to-town, city-to-city. In Bolton, we girls would sing, ‘Wasn’t me. Then who? Couldn’t be. Then you.’, which has similarities to one of the verses Dan Jones includes in his mural. I think this involved throwing a tennis ball within a circle.

I recall we would play a game in which one person, ‘the prince’ – pranced up and down a line of other kids – mainly girls – where we sang:

There came a prince a riding, a riding, a riding.
There came a price a riding
Tish-a-me, tash-a-me-toshaw.

What you riding here for, here for, here for?
What you riding here for?
Tish-a-me, tash-a-me, toshaw.

This would be followed by a response from the prince (which I can’t remember) and more tish-a-me tashy-me calls and responses until the prince chose a bride from the line, who would join him prancing up and down a few more times before the game ended. Sometimes, a very small boy would play the prince but not often as boys joining in girls’ games was considered ‘mard’, a northern dialect word for being soft. Gender roles were taken very seriously by boys. Not so much by girls, who readily took on male roles to enjoy these chanting, dancing games. My husband told me the boys liked to watch the girls playing these games, despite considering them soppy.

In the early 1980s, almost twenty years later, when I worked as a summer play leader, new call and response/role playing games were devised, which had non-gendered or more masculine roles – which, as ever, girls would happily take on – which helped boys to be more comfortable about joining in. Giants, Dwarves and Wizards springs to mind.

It’s good to know that children still play their own rhyming games even today. Games which belong only to children, unlike the ones devised by play leaders and youth leaders, which are great and more inclusive but not so authentic.

By: Sue

Sue — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 11:36:06 +0000

Certainly took me back sixty five years or so. Wonderful painting.
Sue

By: Arabella

Arabella — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 09:17:53 +0000

What a wonderful story. I too collect children’s rhymes and was lucky enough to meet that great collector Iona Opie when she was still alive. Like Dan she was an unassuming person but took what the children shared with her very seriously. I have been meaning to go back to the school I recorded the children’s rhymes back in the 1980s and this has reminded me to do so. The pictures of the children are delightful.

By: achim

achim — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 09:16:13 +0000

A beautiful story. Breuegel’s painting from 1560 is clearly the inspiration, but Dan Jones’ 1977 version has itself become an icon of art history.

And the painting has lost none of its relevance — even the clothes are back in fashion after almost half a century!

Love & Peace
ACHIM

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:43:07 +0000

This guy Dan Jones is a very kind genuine man .
Dan if you are reading this you might remember me from years ago . Chris Searle and Reality Press helped publish my first book of poetry .

Bless you mate and all your family .

Andy

By: Sally Kindberg

Sally Kindberg — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:57:27 +0000

Wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing this.

By: Marnie

Marnie — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:27:33 +0000

I opened this site at 1:58 am American Thanksgiving morning
and I am so glad I did.
Each lovely scene blew me a happy memories kiss.
That is how I remember spending school recess periods during
my innocent childhood. The worst indignity I ever experienced
was having rascal Alan Lee pull my ‘pig tails.’
My little coal-mining town along the Monongahela River was
on the trail to Pittsburgh, so of course General George
Washington dined and slept in quite a few of the still-standing
handsome brick homes.
The wonderful paintings remind me in many respects of the
‘primitive’ New England reflections of Grandma Moses who
discovered her talent when most senior citizens have resigned
their daily activities to occasionally moving their rocking chair.
Grandma’s originals are worth a fortune now. She is worth
Googling.
Thank you, GA, for adding value to my 82nd blessed
Happy Thanksgiving.