In the castles and villages, towns and growing cities, there were always plenty of other children to play with. Children enjoyed hundreds of games and rhymes passed on through generations, some of them thousands of years old, such as 'five stones' (I and P Opie).
Until the 1950s, most children enjoyed much free time away from adults. The streets, fields, woods and rivers were their playgrounds, and they could be away from home all day on their own or with friends. William Blake's poems record how children love to play out in the evening, as does the old rhyme: Girls and boys come out to play The moon doth shine as bright as day Leave your supper and leave your sleep And come with your playfellows into the street Come with a whoop,come with a call Come with a good will or not at all.
In mixed-age groups, with open and challenging spaces (trees and hills to climb, dams to build in streams, bonfires to keep alight) and the wild and secret places they love, it seems that children's play is more civilised (responsible for each other, generous, imaginative) than when they are crowded into bare school yards (I and P Opie; L Lee).
Changing beliefs
Beliefs about childhood change enormously over time and place, particularly about sex. Aries quotes records by the doctor of King Louis XIII of France, born 1601. In 1602 Louis was engaged to the Infanta of Spain, and his doctor wrote that Louis seemed to understand something of sex and marriage.
His attendants 'asked him: "Where is the Infanta's darling?" He put his hand on his cock,' which he often liked to display to his laughing courtiers.
In 1601, Louis was given a hobbyhorse, a windmill, a whipping top, a tambourine, soldiers, a cannon, a clockwork pigeon, scissors, cutting paper and male dolls. Aged four, he enjoyed archery, cards, tennis and hide-and-seek. Aged six, he played chess, charades and pantomime. Aged seven, his toys were taken away, and he enjoyed riding, hunting, fencing, shooting and gambling. Aged nine, he became king when his father was murdered.
Punch and Judy shows, pantomimes, feasts, May pole dancing and fairy stories all used to be for adults and children alike. They were more bawdy, scary and violent than they are today. In earlier times, children were not seen as needing separate kinds of parties, stories, entertainment or spaces.
Organised by adults
Perhaps the greatest changes in children's play have occurred in the past 50 years. Adults now tend to believe they have to watch and control children all the time, and to provide piles of adult-made toys and technologies.
Children no longer have plenty of brothers and sisters to play with, or large neighbouring families. It is harder for them to go out to find friends. Cars have driven children off the roads. 'Stranger danger' fears and complaints about noise and nuisance have driven children off the streets that used to be their playgrounds.
The empty parks show how children stay at home or pay to go to adult-run leisure centres in their free time. Instead of something they just do for its own sake, play is seen as something adults have to organise, pay for, and use to teach, calm, stimulate or reward children.
