The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #143936 Message #3324794
Posted By: Mo the caller
18-Mar-12 - 05:58 PM
Thread Name: Folklore: Childrens' paper fortune tellers
Subject: Folklore: Childrens' paper fortune tellers
We were remembering childhood games on another forum and I googled these folded paper fortune-tellers (since it is very difficult to describe them in words).
Wiki quotes the Opies as saying that they started being used for 'fortune telling' in the 50s in the UK. Which surprised me.
We had them in my last year at junior school (1954), maybe earlier, and I thought they'd always been around.
I knew that American Skipping (with linked rubber bands in a loop round your friends legs, or chair legs) had come in sometime in the 7 years after I left junior school, as my sister did it. And reading Mudcat confirms that, with quotes from the Opies.
So does anyone NOT remember using these fortune tellers? Is it only in the UK that children did it? And do they still do it? I can't remember my children bringing any home.