Childhood Objects: Then and Now

‘In direct contrast to this oral folklore is physical folklife, generally called material culture. Now we deal with the visible rather than the aural aspects of folk behavior that existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. Material culture responds to techniques, skills, recipes and formulas transmitted across the generations and [is] subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation as verbal art.’

Richard Dorson, Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction

With some exceptions, the archives of the National Folklore Collection rarely contain examples of physical objects, though there exist many descriptions, illustrations and photographs of aspects of material culture, including material on foodways, crafts, agriculture, musical instruments, clothing and much more. One aspect of material culture that can often go unrecorded, however, is the material culture of children, an area that can often remain invisible or inaccessible to the adult collector. In the work of the Irish Folklore Commission, children were not interviewed to the same extent as the adult (often elderly) informants, but the 1937-1938 Schools’ Collection provided an opportunity to collect the material culture of children. Some information would have been gleaned from the prompt questions about Festival Customs, Churning or Emblems and Objects of Value, for example, but answers were particularly strong in the case of the topic on Homemade Toys/Bréagáin agus Caitheamh Aimsire.

Children playing conkers, Co. Dublin, c. 1935. Photographer: Maurice Curtin

The Wishbone, Co. Dublin, c. 1935. Photographer: Maurice Curtin

The question encouraged children to write about contemporary toys, as well as toys used in former times. Most of the examples listed in the booklet include toys from nature: daisy chains, guns from elder branches and models from turnips. Illustrations of the toys were encouraged and, as with the topic ‘Games I Play’, the ‘Homemade Toys’ prompt was frequently answered by the schoolchildren themselves. The returns on the topic cover a wide range of toys and amusements. Lists of toys for girls often include dolls made of a variety of materials, as well as daisy chains or other jewellery, belts made of sweet wrappers and other shiny packaging. Boys played with popguns, usually made with a hollowed out tree branch, but other examples mention using a bicycle pump. Traps or snares were common, as were catapults and slingshots. Spinning tops and methods used to make them are often described, as are musical instruments (or in many cases, objects that make noise!). The account below describes the making of a whistle:

‘When you are going to make a whistle you get a sycamore branch about the length of your hand and about the thickness of your finger and you batter it round and round with a stone until you can pull the skin off. Then you pull the skin off and make a three cornered hole in the skin then you cut a bit off the stick and put the skin on again so that the bit that you cut off is level with the hole then you blow in it and it will whistle.’

John Galbraith, Drumbeg, Co. Donegal NFCS 1105: 194

An assortment of toys, Co. Laois. NFCS 825: 122

Drawing of a spinning top, Co. Tipperary. NFCS 562: 121

Bréagáin agus Caitheamh Aimsire, Co. Galway. NFCS 31: 76

While there has been an obvious shift towards mass-produced toys since the 1930s, children’s material culture has not simply ceased to exist in today’s society. As Simon J. Bronner writes in Children’s Folklore: A Source Book:

‘One reaction to mass culture is to alter the factory-made product to suit one’s tastes. A deck of cards became to my childhood friends a marvelous thing with which to show off the patience and prowess needed to build a house or create a design. They took Erector sets and communally figured out ways to use steel rods and bolts from the sets in their homemade carts and boats. Such experiences emphasized their control, their personalizing of things around them. By allowing them to conceive, control, create, or alter things informally, their things helped identify more with the object, and ultimately externalize their identity better.’

An account collected by George McClafferty and Aideen Ireland from schoolgirls of Ravenswell National School, Bray, Co Wicklow as part of the Urban Folklore Project 1979-1980, gives the various names for marbles:

GMcC: Do you have names on different marbles?
Girls: Yeah. Bottlers … Americans … Ball bearings .. Spaghettis …. Glassers ….
GMcC: Right. What are bottlers?
Girls: They’re the big marbles with colours in them. And a ball bearing is just big … steel … and you can get little ones.
GmcC: Steel? Do you call them anything else?
Girls: No. Ball bearing. And you can get small ones of them. And spaghettis are just marbles with all lines like that in it. And the glassers are just balls you know, that you put in a car. And… 
GMcC: in a car?
Girls: Yeah, sometimes you get them out of the engine.
It’s some square thing and there’s four little things in it. And there’s little balls inside it. [collector’s note: probably the battery].
Girls: And there’s Americans - they’re just white and colours in them. And there’s a ‘hundred smack’. A ‘hundred smack’ is like a marble and it has loads of different colours in it.

NFC UFP0348 and NFC 2011: 266-268

Tyres being wheeled for the St John’s Night Bonfire, Co. Mayo, 2001. Photographer: Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh

Kinds of items kicked while playing Hopscotch, Árainn Mhór, Co. Donegal, 1979. Photographer: Bróna Nic Amhlaoibh

Folklore and indeed, folklife, will continue to shift and change as our society does, and as such, we will no doubt see emerging uses and contexts for children’s toys and objects associated with childhood. The continued collecting and understanding of the material culture of childhood is therefore an important task for current and future folklorists.

This post was written by Ailbe van der Heide, Cúntóir Leabharlainne | Library Assistant, Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann | National Folklore Collection.