Ursinus College Digital Commons @ Ursinus College Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection Summer 1974 Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 23, No. 4 Scott aH mbly Waln K. Brown Denis Mercier Angela Varesano Elizabeth Mathias See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Cultural History Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Folklore Commons, Genealogy Commons, German Language and Literature Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, History of Religion Commons, Linguistics Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits oy u. Recommended Citation Hambly, Scott; Brown, Waln K.; Mercier, Denis; Varesano, Angela; Mathias, Elizabeth; Yoder, Don; Barrick, Mac E.; Beck, Berton E.; and Deischer, Claude K., "Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 23, No. 4" (1974). Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine. 59. https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/59 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection at Digital Commons @ Ursinus College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Ursinus College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Scott aH mbly, Waln K. Brown, Denis Mercier, Angela Varesano, Elizabeth Mathias, Don Yoder, Mac E. Barrick, Berton E. Beck, and Claude K. Deischer This book is available at Digital Commons @ Ursinus College: https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/59 SUMMER 1974 J U L Y. Contributors to this Issue SCOTT HAMBLY, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Berkeley, She has specialized in Italian and Italian-American traditional California, native, is editor of the Symposium on Games in cultures, and has spent several years doing field work in this issue. He was Assistant Editor of Western Folklore, Sardinia, part of which was supported by a Fulbright fel­ 1970-1974, before assuming his dual capacity position as lowship. Her latest publication, based on research in the Editorial Assistant for Pennsylvania Folklife and the forth­ Italian community of Philadelphia, is "The Italian-Ameri­ coming American Folklife (University of Texas Press). He can Funeral : Persistence through Change," in Western is presently a predoctoral student in the Graduate Depart­ Folklore, XXXIII: 1 (January 1974),35-50. ment of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Penn­ sylvania. DR. BERTON E. BECK, Bronx, New York, who died this year at the age of 84, was an emigre from rural Lycoming WALN K. BROWN, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is at present County, Pennsylvania. He wrote several important articles with the Department of Education of the Commonwealth for our pages, among them studies of pioneer settlement of Pennsylvania. A native of Pennsylvania, he is working procedure and land-clearing in the high timber country of toward the doctorate in Folklore and Folklife at the Univer­ Lycoming and Tioga Counties, where his Pennsylvania Ger­ sity of Pennsylvania. The Summer of 1972 he spent doing man forefathers pioneered over a century and a half ago. field work at Eckley for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission as part of a research team from the University of Pennsylvania. DR. MAC E. BARRICK, Carlisle, Pennsylvania·, is a member of the Department of Romance Languages at Shippensburg State College. He has contributed many articles of Penn­ DENIS MERCIER, Glassboro, New Jersey, teaches com­ sylvania Folklife, most of them from his field researches in munications at Glassboro State College. He was part of his home area of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. His the three-member field team that investigated life in a full-length book on the folk-culture of the area is scheduled mining town (Eckley) for the Pennsylvania Historical and for publication in 1975. Museum Commission during the summer of 1972. At pre­ sent he is studying for the doctorate in the department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. DR. CLAUDE K. DEISCHER, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. ANGELA V ARESANO, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is at A native of the Moravian town of Emmaus, Lehigh County, present completing research in the British Isles for her doc­ Pennsylvania, and a member of the Moravian Church, he torate in Folklore and Folklife at the University of Penn­ tells in his article in this issue his experiences in knowing sylvania. She was the third member of the field corps at and using the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect in this country Eckley in the summer of 1972. and abroad. The article is another in the series on the sub­ ject which began with Henry Snyder Gehman, "What the Pennsylvania Dutch Dialect Has Meant in My Life." Penn­ ELIZABETH MATHIAS, Jamaica, New York, teaches an­ sylvania Folklife, Volume XV!II No. 4 (Summer 1968), thropology at St. John's University, Jamaica, Long Island. 8-11. EDITOR: Dr. Don Yoder SUMMER 1974, Vol. XXIII, No.4 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Dr. M ac E. Barrick LeRoy Gensler Dr. H enry Glassie Dr. John A. Hostetler D avid J. Hufford Contents Dr. Phil Jack Dr. Hilda A. Kring Dr. Maurice A. Mook Dr. Earl F. Robacker Symposium on Games Dr. Alta Schrock Edited by Scott Hambly FOLK FESTIVAL DIRECTOR: M ark R. Eaby, Jr. 2 Cultural Learning through Game Structure: A FOLK FESTIVAL PUB LIC RELATIONS: Study of Pennsylvania German Children's Games Peg Zecher WALN K. BROWN SUBSCRIPTIONS: Doris E. Stief 12 "Nipsy": The Ethnography of a Traditional Game of Pennsylvania's Anthracite Region PENNSYLVANIA FOLKLIFE, Summer 1974, Vol. 23, No. 4, pub­ DENIS MERCIER lished five times a year by the Penn­ WALN K. BROWN svlvania Folklife Society, Inc., Lan­ ANGELA V ARESANO c~ster, P e nn sy lvania'. $1.50 for single copies; Autumn, Winter, 22 The Game as Creator of the Group in an Italian­ Spring and Summer. $1.00 for Folk American Community Festival Supplement. Yearly sub­ scription $6.00. ELIZABETH MATHIAS MSS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: 31 Pennsylvania Town Views of a Century Ago The Editor will be glad to consider MSS and photographs sent with a DON YODER view to publication. When umuit­ able, and if .accompanied by return 36 "The Barber's Ghost": postage, every care will be exercised A Legend Becomes a Folktale toward their return, although no MAC E. BARRICK responsibility for their safety is as­ sumed. 43 Grain Harvesting in the Nineteenth Century Editorial correspondence: Dr. Don Yoder, Logan Ha\1, BERTON E. BECK Box 13, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19174. 47 My Experience with the Dialect Folk Fes tival correspondence: CLAUDE K. DEISCHER Co\1ege Blvd. and Vine, Kutztown, Pennsylvania 19530. Folk Festival public relations: Harvest on The Pennsylvania Farm: Peg Zecher, 717 N. Swarthmore Ave., Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 34 Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081. (Inside back cover) Subscription, business correspondence: Box 1053, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Contributors to this Issue Contents copyrighted. (Inside front cover) Entered as second class matter at Lancaster, Pa. Cultural Learning through Game Structure: A Study of Pennsylvania German Children~s Games By WALN K. BROWN The history of game scholarship has been both exten­ Sutton-Smith: among others, provide us with an excel­ sive and diverse. The game collections of N ewell,' lent perspective from which to observe the role played Gomme: and the Opies,' -:oupled with the recent anal­ by folkl oristics in the study of games. Couple the folk­ yses of games endeavored by Goldstein: Brewster,' and lorists' purview of games with the insights rendered by psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and other ' Willi am Well s ewell, Games and Songs of A merican Chil­ dren ( ew York, 1963 ) . social scientists, a nd we can readily see that the analysis 'A. B. Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, S cotland, of games is no mere child's play. From collection to and I reland (Lond on, 1894) . ' I ona and Peter O pie, The L ore and Language of S chool­ analysis the study of games offers one more vantage children (London, 1959 ) . point from which to note .and analyze how man ob­ ' K enneth S. Goldstein, "Strategy in Counting Out: An Ethnographic Folklore Field Study," in The Study of Games, serves, interprets, structures, and subsequently orga nizes ed. by Avedon and Sutton·Smith ( ew York, 1971 ), pp. his experience through the phenomena of expressive 167-178. ' Po G. Brewster, " Children's Games and Rhymes," The Frank culture. C. Brown Collection of N orth Carolina Folklore, I: 4, (Dur­ ham, . C ., 1953) ; A merican N on-Singing Games ( Norman, OBrian Sutton-Smith, The Games of N ew Z ealand Children O kl ahoma, 1953 ) ; "The Importa nce of the Coll ecting and (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959 ) ; with Elliott M . Avedon, Study of Games," Eastern Anthropologist, X: 1 ( 1956 ), 5-12 ; The S tudy of Games ( ew York, 1971 ) ; The Folkgames of " Priori ty and Exemption in Children's Games : A Compar. Children (Austin and London, 1972) ; and "The Expressive ative Study," V olkskunde, LVIII (1 957 ) , 21-30, being the Profil e," Journal of A m erican Folklore, LXXXIV ( 1971 ), most important for us. 80- 92, being the most important for us . Skipping Rope - a universal favorite among smaller children. (Photos by Clarissa Smith.) 2 Schoolground games were important in the 19th and 20th Centuries for Pennsylvania children. This illustration of the "Old Schoolhouse by the Creek," is from Harbaugh's Harfe (1870), the first widely circulated volume of Pennsylvania Dutch verse. The study of games provides the researcher a tool that "genuine, pure play, is one of the main bases of for analyzing how the individual and the group or­ civilization."· According to Huizinga's scheme we are ganize their perceptions and integrate them, through to view playas not only the basis for culture but also highly structured play activity, into socially acceptable the means whereby culture sustains itself.