Folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have observed in The Classic Fairy Tales ( 1974 ) that " the tenor of Jack's tale, and some of the details of more than one of his tricks with which he outwits the giants, have similarities with Norse mythology.

Folklorists Iona and Peter Opie point out in The Classic Fairy Tales ( 1999 ) that the tale has a " partial analogue " in " Snow White ": the lost princess enters the dwarves ' house, tastes their food, and falls asleep in one of their beds.

* Folklorists: Daniel Silvan Evans ( Y Brython, 1858 ), Peter Roberts ( Cambrian Popular Antiquities, 1815 ), W. Howells ( Cambrian Supertitions, 1831 ), Isaac Foulkes ( Cymru Fu, 1862 ), Wirt Sikes ( British Goblins, 1880 ), Daniel Silvan Evans, John Jones and others ( Ysten Sioned ), Elias Owen ( Welsh Folklore, 1896 ), Marie Trevelyan ( Folklore and Folk Stories of Wales, 1909 ), J. Ceredig Davies ( Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales, 1911 ).

Folklorists have classified fairy tales in various ways.

Folklorists of the " Finnish " ( or historical-geographical ) school attempted to place fairy tales to their origin, with inconclusive results.

Folklorists sometimes divide oral tales into two main groups: Märchen and Sagen.

Folklorists often go further, defining myths as " tales believed as true, usually sacred, set in the distant past or other worlds or parts of the world, and with extra-human, inhuman, or heroic characters ".

Folklorists of the first decade of the 20th century, especially those from Britain, included shanties among their interests in collecting folk songs connected with the idea of national heritage.

Folklorists have suggested that the most popular legends about Whittington — that his fortunes were founded on the sale of his cat, who was sent on a merchant vessel to a rat-beset Eastern emperor — originated in a popular 17th-century engraving by Renold Elstracke in which his hand rested on a cat, but the picture only reflects a story already in wide circulation.

James Sharpe, in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: the Western Tradition, states: " Folklorists began their investigations in the 19th Century found that familiars figured prominently in ideas about witchcraft.

Folklorists who have collected traditional music of Massachusetts include Eloise Hubbard Linscott, whose field recordings from 1938 and 1941 are in the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

Folklorists Alan Lomax and John Lomax collected the song whilst on a visit to Camp C at Louisiana State Penetentiary in the 1933, where they also discovered blues musician, Lead Belly, who later recorded several versions of the song from 1945 onwards.

Folklorists have attempted to determine the origin by internal evidence, which can not always be clear ; Joseph Jacobs, comparing the Scottish tale The Ridere of Riddles with the version collected by the Brothers Grimm, The Riddle, noted that in The Ridere of Riddles one hero ends up polygamously married, which might point to an ancient custom, but in The Riddle, the simpler riddle might argue greater antiquity.

Folklorists have suggested that their actual origin lies in a conquered race living in hiding, or in religious beliefs that lost currency with the advent of Christianity.

Folklorists have long studied variants on this tale across cultures.

Folklorists have proposed that the mine kobold derives from the beliefs of the ancient Germanic people.

Folklorists have documented folk versions with obscene lyrics from the 19th century.

Folklorists and other ethnographers have taken advantage of each succeeding technology, from Thomas Edison's wax-cylinder recording machine ( invented in 1877 ) to the latest CD or digital audio equipment, to record the voices and music of many regional, ethnic, and cultural groups in the United States and around the world.

Folklorists generally resist universal interpretations of narratives and, wherever possible, analyze oral versions of tellings in specific contexts, rather than print sources, which often show the work or bias of the writer or editor.

Folklorists such as Gwenith Gwynn, interviewing people in the early twentieth century, were unwittingly discovering folk memories of a Victorian misunderstanding rather than an actual, earlier folk practice.

Folklorists associate the practice with the widespread British custom of blacking up for mumming and morris dancing, and suggest there is no record of slave ships coming to Padstow.

Folklorists of the 19th century saw these figures as Celtic fairies.

History of British Folklore, Volume I: The British Folklorists: A History.

Folklorists and cultural anthropologists such as P. Saintyves and Edward Burnett Tylor saw Little Red Riding Hood in terms of solar myths and other naturally occurring cycles, stating that the wolf represents the night swallowing the sun, and the variations in which Little Red Riding Hood is cut out of the wolf's belly represent the dawn.

Folklorists often interpret the French folk tale Cinderella as the competition between the stepmother and the stepdaughter for resources, which may include the need to provide a dowry.

Folklorists and cultural anthropologists such as P. Saintyves and Edward Burnett Tylor saw " Little Red Riding Hood " in terms of solar myths and other naturally-occurring cycles.

Robert Winslow Gordon, Lomax's predecessor at the Library of Congress, had written ( in an article in the New York Times, c. 1926 ) that, " Nearly every type of song is to be found in our prisons and penitentiaries " Folklorists Howard Odum and Guy Johnson also had observed that, " If one wishes to obtain anything like an accurate picture of the workaday Negro he will surely find his best setting in the chain gang, prison, or in the situation of the ever-fleeing fugitive.

The definitive study of English rhymes remains the work of Iona and Peter Opie.

By the time Iona released their first self-titled album in 1990, drummer Terl Bryant, bassist Nick Beggs ( formerly the bassist of Kajagoogoo ), Fiona Davidson on Celtic harp, Peter Whitfield on strings, Troy Donockley on Uillean pipes and percussionist Frank Van Essen had joined the band.

( The following summary is based on an 1853 anonymous translation by Iona and Peter Opie in 1972.

1711, and reprinted in ' The Classic Fairy Tales ' by Iona and Peter Opie in 1974.

According to Iona and Peter Opie, the earliest record of the rhyme only dates to c. 1744, although there is a square dance ( without words ) called ' Oranges and Limons ' in the 3rd edition of John Playford's The English Dancing Master, published in 1665.

* Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, 1959

* Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, ( 2nd edn ) 1997

The rhyming of " water " with " after ", was taken by Iona and Peter Opie to suggest that the first verse may date from the first half of the 17th century.

In the version quoted by Iona and Peter Opie in 1951 the full lyrics were:

The theory that the song refers to the burying, perhaps alive, of children in the foundations of the bridge was first advanced by Alice Bertha Gomme ( later Lady Gomme ) in The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland ( 1894-8 ) and perpetuated by the usually sceptical Iona and Peter Opie.

* Iona Opie, ( born 1923 ), specialist in children's literature, and the customs of schoolchildren-wife of Peter Opie

* Peter Opie, ( 1918-1982 ) English specialist in children's literature, and the customs of schoolchildren-husband of Iona Opie

Perhaps still the most significant work in the field was that of Iona and Peter Opie, which departed from previous practice in Britain ; following work by Dorothy Howard in America and Brian Sutton-Smith in New Zealand, they relied on detailed observation of children for their evidence resulting in their work on The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren ( 1959 ), Children's Games in Street and Playground ( 1969 ) and The Singing Game ( 1985 ).

This led Iona and Peter Opie to conclude that they were three respectable townsfolk " watching a dubious sideshow at a local fair ".

Peter and Iona Opie remark:

* Opie, Iona and Peter, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes ( Oxford: OUP, 1951 ).

* Opie, Iona and Peter, The Singing Game ( Oxford: OUP, 1985 ).

# REDIRECT Iona and Peter Opie

# REDIRECT Iona and Peter Opie

* Peter and Iona Opie

Pioneers of the academic study of children ’ s culture Iona and Peter Opie divided children ’ s songs into those taught to children by adults, which when part of a traditional culture they saw as nursery rhymes, and those that children taught to each other, which formed part of the independent culture of childhood.

The definitive study of English rhymes remains the work of Iona and Peter Opie.

# Iona and Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes ( 1997 ), 175, " A frog he would a-wooing go " ( 3 texts )