'the secret joys of the gutter in a finely printed limited edition for the bibliophile'

it's the anniversary of the wall street crash, the anniversary of black thursday. an event which evenually led (via the WPA) to librarians on horseback roaming the mountains of kentucky, a tradition continued today by the biblioburro in columbia.

horsemouth has started on iona an  peter opie's 'the lore and language of schoolchildren'  -in the introduction they discuss other earlier books about this (peter opie being a keen book-collector) in particular norman douglas's london street games'  which 'records the secret joys of the gutter in a finely printed limited edition for the bibliophile'. opie prefers it to lady gommes' (1894) 'the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland'  which deals with games played by the nicer sort of child in the countryside.

strangely the song 'old dan tucker' by blackface minstrel show musician daniel decatur emmett (the central character in nick tosches account of the minstrel roots of both country and blues 'where dead roads meet'  - horsemouth has it round here somewhere) survived in children's games as 'sam, sam, the dirty old man, washed his face with a frying pan...', a tune horsemouth knew as a child as 'I  saw esau sitting on a seesaw...' descends (in part) from 'I saw esau kissing kate'  by harry hunter and the mohawk minstrels. 

at his junior school in llansamlet (just outside swansea) as a child horsemouth remembers witnessing a game of 'oranges and lemons'  that ended with a tug of war, he also remembers being recorded telling a story about captain scarlet (in a variety of voices). it was from this moment that horsemouth derives his great faith in his story-telling abillity.