Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[516] game-songs, most of them imported from the Old World, are Weevilly Wheat, Juniper tree, Skip to My Lou, The Needle's eye, Happy is the Miller, We're marching Round the Levy; some favourite game-songs of the Central West are Bounce a round, We'll all go down to Rowser's, Pig in the parlour. Beside traditional pieces and those of obscure origin, modern songs of all kinds have been utilized in play-party games: minstrel songs—as Old Dan Tucker, Angelina Baker, Jim along Jo, Buffalo Gals—and the popular street songs, Nelly Gray, Little Brown Jug, John Brown's body, Captain Jinks of the horse Marines. The modern pieces are likeliest to escape mutilation, at least so long as they retain currency as separate songs. Even hymns, scraps of glee club songs, and Mother Goose rhymes are sometimes utilized to form accompaniments to dances. New stanzas are welcomed, and local adaptations, irrelevant or facetious. Judging from recorded material, communal utilization and preservation of a song as a dance song does not bring improvement, nor does it bring development of a narrative element. The refrain formula, that element which shows greatest fluctuation in traditional ballads like the Child ballads, is the most stable element in traditional dance songs.

Other ‘floating’ matter entering obviously by immigration like so many folk-songs and dance songs, and owing its existence to oral tradition, includes counting-out rhymes, flower oracles, skipping-rope rhymes, rhyming proverbs, or aphorisms, saws, weather lore, plant and animal lore, and good and bad luck signs. These belong, however, rather to folk-lore than to literature.

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