Folks interested in this game may also be interested in reading David Rowan: The Times Magazine: Have children really forgotten how to play? {Saturday, May 21, 2005}
That article includes an interview with Iona Opie. Here's an excerpt:
"...Now 81, Iona Opie still has a thick folder labelled "Games Disappearing", chronicling hand-wringing warnings of the tradition's imminent demise that go back as far as 1664. As today, it is technology that has generally shouldered the blame - from the arrival of railways and the gramophone to threats from the wireless and the cinema. "Of course, technology won't kill that insuppressible drive to play," a delightfully opinionated Opie says impatiently in the book-lined dining-room of her rambling Victorian house in Liss, Hampshire. "The latest arguments about television are just another bogie, yet more media scaremongering. The truth is, it's instinctive to exert your own personality."
...You'll find some things have nearly disappeared," she says... "The group singing games, for instance, which used to be sung for courtship by young adults all over Europe. The old games that people are mourning were needed at the time. But this is a living lore that's changing all the time. So if some of the words of the old singing games have lost their function, they'll be changed to produce much more active, combative games."
She reflects that children will always need such ritualised means of confronting social anxieties, affirming their growing independence, or simply channelling their aggression or sexual curiosity. "The fun is making your own mark on a song, by putting in slightly different words," she continues, suddenly animated. "I just adore hearing the words of the old games being modified, corrupted and turned into a sort of surrealist poetry..."