Nearly all the remaining dramatic games form a third class, namely, those where action remains, and where both words and singing are either non-existent or have been reduced to the merest fragments.
In order to complete the investigation from the point we have now reached, it is necessary to inquire what is the controlling force which has preserved ancient custom in the form of children’s games. The mere telling of a game or tale from a parent to a child, or from one child to another, is not alone sufficient. There must be some strong force inherent in these games that has allowed them to be continued from generation to generation, a force potent enough to almost compel their continuance and to prevent their decay. This force must have been as strong or stronger than the customs which first brought the games into existence, and I identify it as the dramatic faculty inherent in mankind.
A necessary part of this proposition is, that the element of the dramatic in children’s games is more ancient than, or at all events as ancient as, the customs enshrined in the games themselves, and I will first of all see if this is so.
With the child the capacity to express itself in words is small and limited. The child does not apparently pay as much attention to the language of those adults by whom he is surrounded as he does to their actions, and the more limited his vocabulary, the greater are his attempts at expressing his thoughts by action. Language to him means so little unless accompanied by action. It is too cold for a child. Every one acquainted with children will be aware of their dramatic way of describing to their mother or nurse the way in which they have received a hurt through falling down the stairs or out of doors, or from knocking their heads against articles of furniture. A child even, whose command of language is fairly good, will usually not be content to say, “Oh, mother, I fell down and knocked my head against the table,” but will say, “Oh, I fell down like this” (suiting the action to the word by throwing himself down); “I knocked my head like this” (again suiting the action to the word by knocking the head against the table), and does not understand that you can comprehend how he got hurt by merely saying so. He feels it necessary to show you. Elders must respond in action as well as in words to be understood by children. If “you kiss the place to make it well,” and if you bind up a cut or sore, something has been done that can be seen and felt, and this the child believes in as a means of healing. A child understands you are sorry he has been hurt, much more readily than if you say or repeat that you are sorry; the words pass almost unheeded, the action is remembered.
Every one, too, must have noticed the observation of detail a child will show in personifying a particular person. When a little child wishes to personate his father, for instance, he will seat himself in the father’s chair, cross his legs, pick up a piece of paper and pretend to read, or stroke an imaginary beard or moustache, put on glasses, frown, or give a little cough, and say, “Now I’m father,” if the father is in the habit of indulging in either of the above habits, and it will be found that sitting in the chair (if a special chair is used by the father to sit in when at home) is the foundation and most important part of the imitation. Other men of the child’s acquaintance read papers, smoke, wear glasses, &c., but father sits in that chair; therefore to be father, sitting in the chair is absolutely necessary, and is sufficient of itself to indicate to others that “father” is being personified, and not another person. To be “mother” a child will pretend to pour out tea, or sew, or do some act of household work, the doing of which is associated with “mother,” while a lady visitor or a relative would be indicated by wearing hat or bonnet or silk dress, carrying a parasol, saying, “How do you do?” and carrying on conversation. Again, too, it is noticeable how a child realises a hurt if blood and swelling ensues after a knock. This is something that can be seen and shown.
When wishing to be an animal, a child fixes at once on some characteristic of that animal which is special to it, and separates it from other animals similar in other ways. Children never personate horses and cows, for instance, in the same manner. Horses toss their heads, shake their manes, paw the ground, prance, and are restless when standing still, gallop and trot, wear harness, and their drivers have reins and a whip. When a child is a cow he does none of these things; he walks in a slower, heavier way, lowers the head, and stares about as he moves his head from side to side, lies down on the ground and munches; he has horns, and rubs these against a tree or a fence.
A child of mine, when told that he must not run in the gutter when out of doors, because that was not the place for little boys, replied, “I am not a little boy now, I am a dog, so I may run in the gutter.” When he came into the path again he became a boy.
Again the same child, when called by his name and told to come out from under a table, a round one, under which he was lying rubbing his head against the pedestal centre, because under the table was not the place for little boys, said, “But I’m not [ ], I’m a cow, and it’s not a table, it’s a tree, and I’m rubbing my horns.”
Again, when personating a train, the actions used are completely different from those used when personating an animal. The child moves at a steady rate, the feet progressing without raising the legs more than necessary, because engines only have wheels, which keep close to the ground; they don’t jump up like feet do, the arms are used as the propeller, and the puffing and screeching, letting off steam, taking in water, are imitated in sound to perfection. This is entirely on the child’s own initiative. When children play in groups the same things occur. Instances could be given ad nauseam. It cannot, therefore, surprise us that in these games children should be found to use actions which indicate to them certain persons or things, although the words they use may render action unnecessary, as action is to them most important. Children, when acting these games or dramas, appear not to need the element of dress or of particular garments to indicate their adoption of certain characters or characteristics. To display your heels and look down at them while doing so signifies a man who wears spurs, a knight; to prance along as if a horse, shows a man on horseback, a duke a-riding. A child lies or stoops down and shuts her eyes, she is dead; if she is passively carried by two others a little distance, she is going to be buried. The child, by standing still, becomes a tree, a house, or a stone wall. If an animal is required to be shown, down goes the child on hands and knees, bends her head down, and the animal is there. If a gate, fortress, or castle is wanted, two children join hands, and their arms are raised or lowered when required for opening the gate, &c. If one child is to personate a “mother,” one or two or more smaller children are placed behind or beside her as her children, because “mothers have children,” and so on. Many other examples could be given from these games of the same kind of thing. There is, then, no difficulty as to the reason why children should have continued playing at these games when once they had seen their elders play them or similar performances, nor why children should not have embodied in a game or play some of the manners and customs which were constantly going on around them in olden times as they do now, imitating the habits and customs of the men and women and animals by whom they were surrounded.
We know from the evidence of those who have collected the games that many were played as amusements by young men and women up to a few years ago. Some are still so played, and some years further back it was a general practice for men and women in country districts to play these or similar games at fairs and festivals; it is unlikely that adults would play seriously at children’s games, but children having seen their elders playing at these amusements would adopt them and use them in their turn, until these amusements become in turn too frivolous and childish for them. It is not so very many years since that the then educated or cultured classes amused themselves by occupations now deemed silly and unfit even for children of the uneducated class—witness practical joking, cock-fighting, &c.