Vol. 2 No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

DUBLIN
STREET RHYMES
LESLIE DAIKEN
How many miles to Dublin town ?
Three score and teny sir:
Can I get there by candle-light ?
Tes, and back again, sir.
(Old Nursery Song.)
A distinguished Dublin poet, whose poems are understood
(and liked) by children under the age of thirteen,
said to me when discussing some Children's Street Games
which I had broadcast, with a group of Dublin kids :
1 It is almost possible to tell what month it is by watching
those children at play. You don't need a calendar. They
seem to have a different sort of play-idea for all the
seasons ' ... It is perfectly true. Hopscotch, swings, hoops,
tops, ball-games, skipping, swings, tig, tug-o-war, relivi-o,
or just singing jingles, all have their special allocation in
time—and in place. Take ball-beds for example. Now that
March winds blow again it is in the pussy-willow and the
hazel catkins that your country people read the signs of
another Spring. In the city there is a different zodiac.
Out come the wooden whipping tops, new and unworn at
the beginning of the fine weather, to be lashed into a wild
ballet movement on many a stone path. Out come the
lengths of rope to be looped high around old lamp-posts—
which are the slum child's maypoles. And the skipping
teams, tired of droning Down Mexico Way, and Oh Johnny,
in the vaulted tenement hallways, come out into the
ambiguous light of a back court or alleyway to enact a