OCR Document


 

"What's for Dinner'!" "Duck Under the Table": Traditional 
Verbal Sayings Addressed to Children by Adults 
Gwenda Heed Davey 

Children's folklore is one of the most authentic, widespread and 
ancient of folkloric traditions. It is a tradition which has received 
considerable research attention in Australia, and in 1979 June Factor 
and I established the Australian Children's Folklore Collection, now 
housed at the University of Melbourne. The Collection includes 
more than 10,000 card files listing children's games, rhymes, 
riddles, jokes, superstitions and other kinds of childhood folklore, 
together with photographs, audio and video tapes, play artefacts, and 
a number of specialist collections of children's lore. 

Children's folklore can be discussed along a number of dimen-
sions, of which the major categories are folklore of children and 
folklore for children, depending on whether the main transmitters of 
the lore are children or adults. Only the first dimension of children' s 
folklore, their own playground lore (or the folklore of children), has 
been well documented in Australia, most recently and notably in 
June Factor's study Captain Cook Chased a Chook: Children's 
Folklore in Australia (1988). This book received the 1989 Opie 
Prize from the American Folklore Society for the best publication in 
children's folklore in the preceding year. The first major book 
describing Australian children's traditional play lore was however 
Cinderella Dressed in Yella (1969) produced by the late Ian Turner, 
Associate Professor of Australian History at Monash University in 
Melbourne. 

The second major dimension of children's folklore is folklore 
which adults address to children, namely folklore for children. Apart 
from nursery rhymes and folk tales, this category of children's 
folklore has been little studied. Children's folklore can also be 
categorised as folklore about children, which includes folk beliefs 
about children. One example of this type is what are sometimes 
called "old wives' tales," for example the belief that "if you tickle a 
baby's feet you'll make it stutter." A final, less clear-cut dimension 
of children's folklore considers the notion of children as apprentices 
in the learning of adult folkways. These folkways may range from 
table manners to participation in religious or secular rituals and 
ceremonies. Folklore for children includes numerous types, some of 
which overlap, and I am certain that the following list is not 
exhaustive: 

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Lullabies (e.g. Rockabye Baby on the Tree Top) 
Nursery Rhymes (e.g. Humpty Dumpty) 
Rhymes and Chants (e.g. Pat a Cake) 
Tickling games (e.g. Round and Round the Garden) 
Finger plays and other body games (e.g. Here's the Church and Here's the Steeple) 
Bouncing (dandling) rhymes (e.g. Ride a Cock Horse) 
Pencil and paper games (e.g. Boxes or Dots) 
Proverbs (e.g. Too many Cooks) 
Reprimands or evasions (e.g. A Wig-Warn for a Goose's Bridle) 
Warnings (e.g. If the wind changes...) 
Toys (e.g. peg dolls) 
Tales or "modern legends" (told to older children e.g. concerning public toilets or 

cinemas and white slavery) 
Superstitions (e.g. don't walk on the cracks in the footpath) 
Fairy tales (e.g. Goldilocks and the Three Bears) 
Home-made stories or reminiscences (e.g. When I was a boy...) 
Rituals (e.g. Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy) 
Jokes (e.g. riddles or knock-knocks) 
Teases (e.g. Which hand will you have?) 
Songs (e.g. What shall we do with the drunken sailor?) 
Parodies (e.g. Oh X has got a bunion, a face like a pickled onion) 
Prayers (e.g. Now I lay me down to sleep) 
Games (e.g. How many buttons etc. in my hand?) 
Misinformation (e.g. Where babies come from) 
Drawings (e.g. stick figures) 
Paper dolls (made with scissors) 

All of these forms of folklore for children are practised by adults for 
children's amusement or edification. Like children's own playground games, 
much of this type of folklore is of great antiquity and is one of the most 
interesting examples of the continuity of folk traditions within modem 
society. 

A common type of folklore for children involves idioms used in 
everyday speech, such as threats, retorts, reprimands and other formulaic 
statements. With the notable exception of Widdowson's 1977 study from 
Newfoundland, If You Don't be Good: Verbal Social Control in 
Newfoundland, there has been little scholarly attention to this interesting type 
of children's folklore which might be described as "family sayings." Some of 
my own collection of family sayings have been published in Snug as a Bug 
(1990) and Duck Under the Table (1991). My collecting has all been in 
Australia, from informants representing three generations, and it includes 
some items similar to those quoted by Widdowson from Newfoundland, for 
example: 
If the wind changes [while you're pulling that face, etc.] you 'Il stay that way. 

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What 's for Dinner? 

If you don't be good, Santa won't come. 
Do you want the back of my hand? 

Such similarities are interesting indications of the international spread of 
verbal folklore in Anglophone communities. As well as threats such as the 
above, verbal folklore used by adults with children includes homilies such 
as: 
Don't care was made to care, 
Don't care was hung;  
Don't care was put in a pot, 
And made to hold his tongue. 

It also includes warnings such as "If you cry on your birthday, You'll cry all 
the year, " reprimands such as "Little pigs have big ears" or "Your eyes are 
too big for your belly, " exhortations to "Eat your crusts or your hair won't 
curl, " pacifiers such as "Don't get off your bike" or "Don't get your knickers 
in a knot" and tricks and jokes such as: 

I'll tell you a story 
About Jack a Nory. 
Shall I begin it? 
That's all that's in it. 

My collecting has not only been within Anglophone communities. 
Australia is today one of the world's great immigrant and multicultural 
societies, with more than one hundred languages regularly spoken, and I 
have collected family sayings in a number of different languages. There is a 
surprising similarity between different language groups, in the jocular and 
sometimes sharp parental retorts to children's persistent questions such as 
"What's for dinner, Mum?". A Greek mother might say "My liver and 
kidneys!" and a Croatian mother "Cakes with honey," whereas some English-
language answers to "What's for dinner? " are "Duck under the table" or 
"Bread and scrape. " I have also collected in Australia traditional replies to 
children's requests to know how old an adult is; "as old as my tongue and as 
young as my teeth" is Anglo-Australian and "twenty-five years per leg" is 
Italo-Australian. 

How might these family sayings be understood? Widdowson's study has 
only concerned itself with verbal social control, usually expressed in the 
form of threats. He describes some of the characteristics of the threats thus: 

The threats warn of three principal retributive consequences, either singly or in 
combination. 

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1. The intervention of some real or imaginary external figures, to which responsibil-
ity for punishment is delegated and which will take the child or harm him in some 

 way. 
2. Alienation of parental affection and revocation of familial security. 
3. Physical punishment by the parent or other adult. (27) 

I think however that the whole genre of traditional family sayings for 
children has much wider ramifications than simple social control, and much 
may indeed be considered as verbal art. While preparing the manuscript of 
Duck Under the Table, I roughly classified its two hundred items under 
headings which are listed below, with one example for each: 

Advice, Exhortations etc. (e.g. Good better best, never let it rest etc.) Arguments (e.g. 
I've got a bone to pick with you)  

Bed Time (e.g. Come on, hit the sack!)  
Body Noises and Functions (e.g. Child: My hand's itchy! That means you're coming 

into money) 
Busy (e.g. I'm flat out like a lizard drinking) 
Compliments (e.g. Your blood's worth bottling) 
Descriptions (e.g. You look like something the cat dragged in) 
Don 't (e.g. Don't bust your boiler) 
Exasperation (e.g. What did your last slave die of?) 
Exclamations (e.g. Bob's your uncle!) 
Fatalism, Philosophising (e.g. What won't fatten will fill) 
Food, Meals (e.g. You must have hollow legs) 
Feelings, Health etc. ( e.g. You've got the collywobbles) 
How (e.g. Child: How far is it? Twice as jar as from here to there) 
Insults (e.g. You can stew in your own juice) 
Just for Fun (e.g. I forgive you, thousands wouldn't) 
Manners (e.g. All joints on the table will be carved) 
Proverbs, Moral sayings etc. (e.g. Rooster today, feather duster tomorrow)  
Sarcasm, Sharp retorts etc. (e.g. I wasn't born yesterday) 
Secrets (e.g. Don't let the cat out of the bag) 
Teases (e.g. I can see your poppy show) 
Threats (e.g. I'll come down on you like a ton of bricks) 
What (e.g. Child: What's that? A silver new nothing) 
What's for Dinner (e.g. Bread and pullet) 
What's the Time (e.g. Time you got a watch) 
Where (e.g. Child: Where's Mum? Up the river shooting oysters) 
Why (e.g. Because Y's a crooked letter and Z's no better) 

A few of these sayings should probably be eliminated from a discussion of 
folklore for children, since they can also be used between adults. Thus an 
appreciative adult might tell another adult that "your blood's worth bottling." 

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What 's for Dinner? 

Nevertheless, most of them, and particularly the responses to persistent 
questioning such as "What's for dinner?" are only used in adult-to-child 
interaction. It is true that some of these sayings are used for purposes of 
social control, as Widdowson has asserted. However, I can identify eight 
functional categories, and believe this type of traditional family verbal lore 
can involve the following characteristics: 

Direct control 
Evasion or obscurantism 
Comment or reflection 
Bonding or affection 
Enjoyment of verbal display, performance 
Adult mystique 
Tension reduction 
Education, training 

Examples of each are as follows: 

Direct control (If you don't be good I'll drop ya - like a mozzie on Mt. Kozziel)1 
Evasion (A wigwam for a goose's bridle) 
Comment (Money doesn't grow on trees) 
Bonding (You're a sight for sore eyes) 
Performance (Two heads are better than one, even if they are only sheep's)  
Adult mystique (Little pigs have big ears) 
Tension reduction (What do you think this is, bush week?) 
Education (Put your best foot forward) 

I acknowledge that there is overlap between the categories. I have no 
belief in infallible systems of classification, but have devised the above as an 
indication of the possibilities for going beyond Widdowson's emphasis on 
"social control," and for extending discussion of the meaning of this tradi-
tional verbal folklore which adults use with children. It is of course possible 
that the functional analysis should not be taken too seriously, and that all 
types of traditional family sayings should rather be regarded—and 
admired—as yet another form of adult verbal art.2 

National Centre for Australian Studies  
Monash University, Melbourne Australia. 

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NOTES 

1. "Mozzie" = mosquito. "Kozzie" is a common abbreviation for Australia's highest 
mountain, Mt. Kosciusko. 
2. This paper was originally presented to the 1995 American Folklore Society Annual 
Meeting at Lafayette, Louisiana. 

WORKS CITED 

Davey, Gwenda. Snug as a Bug: Scenes from Family Life. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 
 1990. 
_____. Duck Under the Table: More Scenes from Family Life. Melbourne: Oxford 
 UP, 1988. 
Factor, June. Captain Cook Chased a Chook: Children's Folklore in Australia. 
 Ringwood Vic (Melbourne): Penguin Books Australia, 1988. 
Turner, Ian. Cinderella Dressed in Yella: Australian Children's Play-rhymes. 
 Melbourne: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1969. 
Widdowson, J. If You Don't be Good: Verbal Social Control in Newfoundland. 
 Social and Economic Studies No. 21. St. John's, Newfoundland, CA: Institute 
 of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, 1977. 

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