Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)
Geoff Barnbrook: From description to prescription and back again
That married the man all tattered and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milked the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. (Opie & Opie, 1951, pp.229-231) Every line of the cumulative verses of the rhyme, usually accompanied by appropriate illustrations on its first occurrence in printed editions, sets out some of the typical characteristics of the item introduced in the previous line as an integral part of the narrative. Consider the explanation given in Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (Sinclair, 1987) for sense 1.1 of'cat': A cat is a small furry animal with a tail, whiskers, and sharp claws that kills smaller animals such as mice and birds. (CCELD p.214) The line relating to 'cat' in the rhyme: That killed the rat has significant echoes in this definition. Each line is almost a form of definition, and the cumulative nature of many of these catalogue rhymes in recitation could make them especially suitable for teaching the lexical, syntactic and even semantic properties of the words in their texts. Opie & Opie (1951) suggest that other similar accumulative rhymes, such as 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' (pp.1 19-122) and 'The Wide-mouth waddling Frog' (pp. 181-183) would be played as forfeit games, with individuals responsible for each verse and paying forfeits for mistakes. The full title of a version of this latter rhyme, quoted by Opie & Opie from The Top Book of All , published around 1760, is 'The Play of the Wide-mouth waddling Frog, to amuse the mind, and exercise the Memory', an explicit statement of a pedagogic role concealed in the fun. Early spelling books use similar techniques to distinguish between words which can easily be confused with each other: they place their subject words in a suitable context to provide the necessary information. The following consecutive groups of words are taken 9
