'Jenny Jones' and 'Kostroma'Author(s): Lisa WarnerSource: Folklore, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Winter, 1970), pp. 276-279Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259194 .

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'Jenny Jones' and 'Kostroma'

by LISA WARNER

CHILDREN'S games are not only fascinating in themselves but they can also sometimes provide the folklorist or historian with useful evidence of primitive beliefs and practices. A number of them have been known from ancient times and variants of themes well-known in England as well as the methods of play and even the words which accompany the games can be found in many other countries. I was interested to discover, for instance, that the game 'Jenny Jones' or 'Georgina' popular during the last century had a direct parallel in Russia.

'Jenny Jones' is included in Alice B. Gomme's now classic collection The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland, (London 1894-9) where it is described as being popular and wide- spread. To play the game the girls split in two groups, Jenny Jones and her nurse in the one and Jenny's friends in the other. The friends, holding hands in a straight line advance towards Jenny asking if they may see her:

We've come to see Jenny Jones' Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones, We've come to see Jenny Jones And how is she now?

Each time they are rebuffed by the nurse who explains that Jenny is busy; washing, starching, drying, ironing, folding etc. A list of various household occupations is given and then the girls are told that their friend is ill, dying and, eventually, dead. There follows a mock funeral in which the corpse of Jenny is carried away and mourned over. The game may continue indefinitely for at this point the dead Jenny Jones often leaps to her feet2 and the

1 A. B. Gomme op. cit. vol. I, p. 264. 2 Variants from Ireland, Southampton, Northants etc. in A. B. Gomme op. cit, p. 278.

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'JENNY JONES' AND 'KOSTROMA'

child caught by her in the ensuing chase becomes the heroine of the next game.

The analogous Russian game, also played by small girls in the nineteenth century, was known as 'Kostroma'.

The festival of 'Kostroma' as it was known in Northern Russia or 'Kostrubon'ka' in the Ukraine, was part of the spring cycle of ritual agricultural ceremonies and was celebrated between Whitsun and the beginning of the St Peter Fast on the 29 June. In its ritual form 'Kostroma', performed by the young women of the villages consisted of three main parts; the preparation, the funeral pro- cession itself and the burial. During the preparation for the cere- mony a young girl was chosen to depict Kostroma, or a large doll was fashioned from straw and dressed like a peasant woman in shirt and 'sarafan'. A scarf was tied round the head and the figure, decked with garlands of flowers, was ready for the funeral pro- cession in which Kostroma, now dead, was placed upon a bier and escorted to the nearest river or lake. The women who accompanied the procession, including one who represented the professional lament-singer hired for village funerals, lamented the departed. Finally, the doll was undressed and cast into the water.

In its salient features this ceremony corresponds to a whole series of other spring and summer rituals beginning with Maslen- itsa in February, Semik in the 7th week after Easter, Yarilo between April and June, and ending with Ivan Kupala (St John's Eve) on the 24 June. In all these an anthropomorphic figure representing the spirit of vegetation is seen to die, and is destroyed or buried in a mock funeral to which various realistic details were often added; a mock priest, mock relatives, even a mock widow if the doll was male. A resurrection was not unknown in some parts of the country in particular the Ukraine. Kostrubon'ka, in a variant described by Professor A. Beletskii3 rose from the dead to the following joyful verses from the choir:

OXHB, OXHB Ham KocTpy6oHbKa OxAIB, OEKHB Ham roIy60HbKa!

He has come back to life, come back to life our Kostrubon'ka He has come back to life, come back to life our dear one!

* Prof. A. Beletskii, Starinnyi teatr v Rossii (Moscow 1923), p. 21.

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'JENNY JONES' AND 'KOSTROMA'

'Kostroma', however, also existed in another edition less obviously connected with primitive agricultural beliefs and it is this edition which closely resembles the English 'Jenny Jones'.

This game in Russia was played by small girls although variants where Kostroma was a boy are also known. The children first of all cast lots for the two main parts of Kostroma and her nurse. While the remainder of the children formed a circle round them the nurse sat upon the ground with the sick girl, Kostroma, lying across her lap. The girls sang the following rhyme:

KocTpoMymiKa, KocTpoMa, CynapbIHa TbI MOA, CocTapaIna TbI MeHII CBOHM yMOM-pa3yMOM, CBoeio noxoaKoIo, CKoporo noroBopIcoo. Little Kostroma, Kostroma, My little mistress You've put years on me With your nimble wits And your agile legs And your chattering tongue.

This was followed by a question and answer game as in the English version:

Irpaonmne: TyK, TyK y BopoT! HRHbKa: KTO TaM?

Hrparonmne: Ky3bMa Kp4BOpoT. HAIHbKa: 3aqeM? Hrpaioumwe: KocTpoMa AoMa? HAHbKa: HeTy-TI, B ropoT yexajna. The players: Knock, knock on the gate! The nurse: Who is there? The players: Kuz'ma Squintmouth. The nurse: Why have you come? The players: Is Kostroma at home? The nurse: No she's not, she has gone to town.

The players continued to ask for Kostroma, each time receiving a different negative answer: K o6egHH ymiia, OT o6eAHu nprumnIa, o6egaeT, OTgbIxaeT, 3a6onena, BOqeHb TpyJAHa, yMepna, XOpOHHTb

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'JENNY JONES' AND 'KOSTRMOA'

Hecyr. She has gone to mass, just come home from mass, having lunch, resting, she is ill, very ill, she has died, she is being taken

away for burial. As in 'Jenny Jones' the dead Kostroma was carried off with

much weeping and lamentation. The girls fell to the ground in grief. Then Kostroma leapt to her feet and struck at them saying: fleKH 6JIHbr, noMHHRa MeH5A4 - Bake pancakes, in remembrance of me. When she struck the last of them everyone leapt to their feet and ran off. The one she caught became the next Kostroma.5

In the English game Jenny's absence is invariably explained by her preoccupation with various household tasks and according to Lady Gomme 'the domestic economy which they reveal is in no case out of keeping with the known facts of everyday peasant life.'6 In many variants of the Russian game household duties are also mentioned. These too reflect the somewhat different domestic background of the Russian players - chopping wood, heating the bath-house, spinning flax.7

It seems likely in view of the similarities between the two games that 'Jenny Jones' like 'Kostroma' is a rationalised version of a spring ritual. In passing from the women of the village, traditional guardians of agricultural ritual, into the hands of children, the game has been reinterpreted and reconstructed accordingly.

'Jenny Jones' is no longer popular. It is not recorded in the Opies' recent comprehensive collection of children's games in Britain 'Children's Games of Street and Playground'. But other chasing games which revolve round the sudden awakening of a dead figure such as 'Dead Man/Green Man arise' or the German 'Nix in der Grube' are still played.8

4 Pancakes were baked at Russian wakes. 5 P. V. Shein. Velikorus' v svoikh pesnyakh, obryadakh, obychayakh. (SPb.

1898) P. 49. 6 A. B. Gomme. Op. cit. vol. 1, p. 283. 7 V. I. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross. Igry narodov SSSR (Moscow-Leningrad

1933) P. 319, 3Io. 8 Iona and Peter Opie. Childrens' Games in Street and Playground, (Oxford

1969.) pp. lo6-7.

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