And father went down, down, down into the hole
And the bull-frog, he went up, up, up into the sky!
And then the bull-frog, he went down, down, down into the hole
And then father, he went up, up, up, way into the sky!
And then the bull-frog he went down, down, down into the hole
And up, up into the sky!
And then he went down into the hole
And up into the sky!
And he went down and up and down and up
And down and up and down and up
And down and up and down and up
And down and up
And down and up
And down and up
Down and up—— (to wordless song.)
Story by a Four-Year-Old
Baby Bye, Baby Bye
Here’s a fly
You’d better be careful
Else he will sting you
And here’s a spider too.
And if you hurt him he will sting you
And don’t you hurt him
And his pattern on the wall.
Certainly all have form,—spontaneous native art form. Indeed they strongly suggest that to the child, the pleasure lay in the form rather than in the content. The patterns of the first two are somewhat alike,—variations of a simple statement. In content the younger child keeps her attention on one point, so to speak, while the older child allows a slight movement like an embryonic narrative. The pattern of the three-year-old’s is considerably more complex. The phrases shorten, the tempo quickens, until the whole swings off into wordless melody. The fourth probably started from some remembered lullaby but quickly became the child’s own. I give two more examples of stories. In the first, does not this five-year-old girl give us her vivid impressions in marvelously simple sense and motor terms? And does not the six-year-old boy in the second show that imagination can spring from real experiences?
Stories by Five-Year-Olds
I am going to tell you a story about when I went to Falmouth with my mother. We had to go all night on the train and this is the way it sounded, (moving her hand on the table and intoning in different keys) thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, NEW ARK! thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, thum, FALMOUTH! And then we got off and we took a trolley car and the trolley car went clipperty, clipperty, clipperty, zip, zip. And another trolley car came in the other direction (again with hands) and one came along saying clipperty, clipperty, clipperty, zip, zip and the other came along saying clipperty, clipperty, clipperty, zip, zip, zip, BANG! And they hit in the middle and they got stuck and they tried to pull them apart and they stuck and they stuck and they stuck and finally they got them apart and then we went again. And when we got off we had to take a subway and the subway went rockety-rockety-rockety-rock. You know a subway makes a terrible noise! It made a terrible noise it sounded like rockety-rockety-rockety-rockety-rock.
And at last we got there and when we came up in the streets of Falmouth it was so still that I didn’t know what to do. You know the streets of Falmouth are just so terribly quiet and then we had to walk millions and millions of miles almost to get to our little cottage. And when we got there I put on my bathing suit and I went in bathing and I shivered just like this because it was a rainy day, the day I went to Falmouth with my mother.
The Talk of the Brook
O brook, O brook, that sings so loud,
O brook, O brook, that goes all day,
O brook, O brook, that goes all night
And forever.
Splashes and waves, girls and boys are playing with
You and in you.
Some with shoes off and some with shoes on,
And some are crying because they fell in you.
O brook, O brook, have you an end ever?
Or do you go forever?
Technically in all these stories the child exemplifies the two rules. He attends to but one thing at a time. And his steps from one point to the next are short and clear.