The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167954   Message #4056024
Posted By: Jim Carroll
30-May-20 - 10:43 AM
Thread Name: Foul-mouthed Folkies
Subject: RE: Foul-mouthed Folkies
Look forward to the world opening up again Shug
Might be able to reciprocate in kid
There's a lovely article here by the somewhat prim Edith Fowk on Bawdy Canadian Folk Songs
I haven't got round to digitising the Australian study of children's 'dirty' songs, 'Shocking, Shocking, Shocking'

Pehaps we should take note of the wrning given by Iona and Peter Opie in their book on Children's Folklore, 'The Lore and Langhiage of Schoolchildren:

"Genuinely erotic verse, however, is unusual. That there are villains among children, as among adults, the News of the World offers frequent testimony; and from somewhere the ogre child acquires his strange salacious prescriptions, taking criminal pleasure in pressing them on juniors, and inscribing them on the walls of the school lavatory.
But we are not here discussing delinquents. The usual group of youngsters whispering together, passing some verse to each other and giggling, though they refuse to tell what it is, are probably interested in nothing more sordid than the deeds of nature, an intimate garment, or a crude word."

Pp. 95-96, Chapter 6, ‘Parody and Impropriety,   Lore and Language of Schoolchildren.Oxford at Clarendon Press Publishers 1959

They knew a thing or one, those people :-)
Jim