Volume 32, Number 16 · October 24, 1985
Life's Greatest Hits
By Alison Lurie
The Singing Game
by Iona Opie, by Peter Opie
Oxford University Press, 521 pp., $24.95
To look steadily and seriously at some aspect of life that most people would dismiss as trivial or tiresome takes both courage and a kind of genius. The British folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have always had both. When they began collecting and studying children's songs and games during World War II, this material was of interest mainly to antiquarians and playground directors. They were only sixteen and twenty-one respectively, and neither of them had been to a university. For a time they and their three children were so poor that they sometimes ate nettles from their town park in Hampshire.
Review, 2144 words
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