Boots Variations
Ludoteca Kodalyiana
The Hungarian Academy in Rome used to entertain children one Saturday a month. Hungarian-speaking children came from families who were living abroad having at least one of the parents as Hungarian. Children of all age from toddlers to primary school students would attend. I had singing-drawing mornings with them twice, the last occasion was 12 April 2003. At that time, one of the Italian fathers asked me for advice concerning the art-instruction of his very agile little boy. Yes, he hoped for guidance in providing art-instruction in his child’s education. I gave him some ideas, and some guidelines to consider and he said he would continue to develop these at home.
1. Q: Why do you change folk songs?
A: Because they provide opportunity for games of imagination. Let us see for example the one starting with “Mother, my dear mother, my boots have been torn”. It is a wonderful little pentatonic folk song, a real gem, its tune is excellent, its cadence beautiful.
2. Q: Don’t you learn the original text?
A: To be sure we do. It is a nice little text: “Mother, my dear mother, my boots have been torn. My boots have been torn, who is going to sew them now? Daughter, my dear daughter, we have been threshing barley during the summer. We will sell the barley, we will buy new boots.”
3. Q: Do children from the city understand this?
A: No, but it’s not important. I explain to them what threshing is, how the grain sold will provide money for new boots. But for babies it is not the content that is relevant. Their reception takes place at other levels.
4. Q: What levels?
A: On the level of emotions and of pleasure. They love to sing it. It resounds in them.
5. Q: You could then just repeat it in the same way, couldn’t you?
A: Of course, we could repeat it endlessly. But I wanted to weave games of imagination around the song, what’s more, to weave the children’s names into it: that’s what I do on every possible occasion. “Hanna, my dear Hanna, what are your boots made of?” This text, for example, fitted the tune nicely.
6. Q: Were they surprised?
A: Yes, they were. At first they said it was made of leather, rubber, that is, they talked about reality. But then someone said it was made of wood, which nowadays is a bit tale-like. In Rome, during my course at the Hungarian Academy, a five-year old child imagined that his boots were made of straw. Then the fable-world opened up and boots became made from drops of water, wind, leaves, petals, ash, clouds, more and more beautiful ideas as well.
7. Q: Did parents appreciate these ideas?
A: It rarely becomes clear whether they have understood what happened before their eyes. Even their familiarity with child psychology is not sufficient to immediately grasp what has happened there.
8. Q: What has happened there?
A: Children have stepped out of the closed and confined world of reality to fly into the colourful world of tales. In a tale boots can be made of clouds or wind, and boots made of leaves are much more interesting than rubber boots.
9. Q: Shouldn’t one’s objective rather be that children learn reality?
A: Why? They already know that. No child will demand that their snow-boots would be made of feathers or pancakes. Tales are there to make life richer and more colourful. A child intuitively knows perfectly well the value of imagination and pleasure. This “knowledge” makes his/her life more beautiful. That is why he/she is different from adults.
10. Q: How do you manage to make them come up with varied ideas?
A: They always have varied ideas, but they wouldn’t dare mention them if they felt they would be ridiculed. When I clear a path for their ideas, they feel uplifted to find their ideas honoured. Who wouldn’t be glad to find that his/her thoughts are appreciated?
11. Q: So your aim in inventing funny ideas like the boots made of pancakes is not merely entertaining?
A: Not at all, I teach three-year-olds not to be ashamed of their thoughts, but to bravely take them on. They should believe that there will always be fellows who appreciate them. We never laugh at a child. These are lessons for life.
12. Q: Why do you weave their names into songs?
A: I can’t mention their names often enough. To say their names with love and delight is to encourage them to find pleasure in their own name. There are children who are constantly ruled, directed, disciplined, and led by others. They should be doing something, they should obey in some matter or stop doing something. The name woven into a song lifts them up from the prose, the everyday customs, the ‘must do’s. “István, my dear István, what are your boots made of?” – I sing weaving the name into a beautiful old folk song. István rejoices in the idea that he can invent his own fabled boots that nobody else could have; yet everybody will like. He says they are made of walnuts.
13. Q: Are you really glad about such things or do you just show happiness from pedagogical considerations?
A: I never show anything I do not feel in my heart. Those who pretend, even with good intentions, lose credibility. A child with a sound soul will know whether you are real. He/she will only respond from his/her heart to heartfelt truth. I don’t have to pretend, I really enjoy children’s ideas immensely. Take the boots made of walnuts, for example, it is poetry, I can see it right away on my own legs as I roll in them much faster than I could walk on my feet. In such boots I can reach far, unknown worlds, even the stars.
14. Q: Can you teach this to parents?
A: I can. I have met several parents who have accepted their children with their tales, and who breathe comfortably in the sphere of poetry. In the poetry of music and in the poetry of colours and shapes as well. The tale about the boots made of cherries or feathers is like the speaking grape, or the ringing apricot. Should I taste them or speak to them? In my imagination everything is possible.