Customer Reviews
Back to the future - By: Rr Clark, 29 Nov 2007 
This book is a true gem, if you value or are interested in childrens culture. Ewan McVicar has brought together some 900 or so rhymes, poems & songs from a variety of sources, & melded them with his own vast fieldwork collection. He uses sources from earlier authorities in the field, such as Robert Chambers, Alice Gomme, the Opies & the publications of the Rymour Club.
In so doing, he is in a position to show how these verses & shouts have evolved over time. The remarkable resilience & persistence of these streetsongs is demonstrated, by, for example, Betty Grable morphing into Kylie Minogue, but the true wonder is how the oral tradition survives against the might of Nintendo & the rampant iconography of current "heroes".
While for many the major pleasure may be in reading & reminiscing (and smiling!), McVicar shows us his scholastic credentials by offering us links from these songs & rhymes that lets us pursue them into, for example, the canon of work that is the Child Balllad collection: he also tantalises by tracing a song vocable (aleerie) back to Piers Plowman, & can have you racing for your Bible.
This intelligent, sympathetic & compassionate book will fascinate & entertain.
