Iona and Peter Opie

Peter Opie was born in 1918 in Cairo in the war-time British Protectorate or Sultanate of Egypt and was educated at Eton College. At the outbreak of World War II, Opie joined the Royal Fusiliers, becoming a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment. However, an accident whilst training ended his military career. Iona Margaret Balfour Archibald was born in Colchester, Essex, England in 1923. She was educated at Sandecotes School, a boarding school for girls in Parkstone, Dorset. During World War II she joined the meteorological section of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. The couple met during World War II and married on 2 September 1943. The couple moved from London to rural England. Their interest in children's lore has been credited to the Opies recalling whilst out on a countryside walk, the "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home" rhyme from their youth. They began researching into the origins of the rhyme, and as their interest grew they began to collect nursery rhyme books. == Development of their research ==

Initially, the Opies based their research on printed material or previously collected oral sources. In 1951, they published The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes, still hailed as the standard work on the subject. By the time of the publication of The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959), they had received contributions from about five thousand children (at seventy state schools). The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren was meant to counter the argument that mass media and the entertainment industry had ruined childhood traditions. The Opies' use of surveys as a research methodology has been compared to growth of social surveys (such as the Mass-Observation project) in Britain from the 1930s onwards. == Later years ==

Peter Opie died on 5 February 1982 at home, Westerfield House, West Liss, Hampshire. Iona Opie continued to research and publish. She completed two further volumes based on the Opies' joint research, The Singing Game (1985) and ''Children's Games with Things (1997). She also collaborated with Moira Tatem on A Dictionary of Superstitions (1989), and with Brian Alderson and her son, Robert Opie, on A Treasury of Childhood: Books, Toys, and Games from the Opie Collection (1989). Iona Opie revised the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1997) and went onto produce a solo volume, The People in the Playground'' (1993), which differed by "focusing on the players, rather than the games and rhymes". Iona Opie died on 23 October 2017. == Recognition ==

In 1960, the Opies were jointly awarded the Coote Lake Medal, the highest honour of The Folklore Society, "for outstanding research and scholarship". Peter Opie also served as President of the Folklore Society in 1963 and 1964 and President of the Anthropology Section of the British Association in 1962 and 1963. In 1962, the Opies were awarded honorary degrees from Oxford University. Iona Opie was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1998 and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999. ==Opie collections==

The Opies' collection of children's books and ephemera covers the 16th to the 20th centuries and is the richest library of children's literature. It was begun in 1944, amounting in the end to 20,000 pieces. During 1988, it was donated to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, after a two-year public appeal raised the £500,000 cost. The collection is also available on microfiche. The Archive of Iona and Peter Opie (the Opie 'Working Papers') is also held at the Bodleian Library. It contains the bulk of the Opie papers and includes "responses of an estimated 10,000 children from schools all over Britain to a series of surveys undertaken by the Opies in the period c.1950–1980". The collection also sheds light on the Opie's working methods, for instance, the nature of the questionnaires that the Opies sent to children (and once completed were sent back to them). The Opie Collection of Children's Games and Songs is an archive of audiotapes donated to the British Library in 1998. It contains fieldwork recordings of children's play made by Iona Opie between 1969 and 1983, as research for The Singing Game about singing games. The Opie Papers held by the Folklore Society, London, contain adult and child contributions relating to children's customs and belief, as well as Opie research materials, personal papers and Folklore Society papers. The Archive of Iona and Peter Opie, the Opie Collection of Children's Games and Songs and the Opie Papers held by the Folklore Society, are being catalogued, digitised and made freely available online as part of a collaboration between University of Sheffield, University College London, the Bodleian Libraries, the Folklore Society and the British Library. The collaboration is called Childhoods and Play: The Iona and Peter Opie Archive and is a British Academy Research Project. ==Selected works==

They authored about 25 books including: • Peter Opie, 1946, The Case of Being a Young Man, a discursion (Chosen Books, competition prize winner) • Iona and Peter Opie, collectors and editors, 1947. I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth (Williams & Norgate Ltd) • Iona and Peter Opie, editors, 1951. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press) • Iona and Peter Opie, 1959, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford University Press) • Iona and Peter Opie, 1963, The Puffin Book of Nursery Rhymes (Penguin/Puffin) • Iona and Peter Opie, 1969, ''Children's Games in Street and Playground'' (Oxford University Press) • Iona and Peter Opie, editors, 1974. The Classic Fairy Tales (Oxford University Press). Presents the texts of twenty-four familiar fairy tales as they were first published in English; summarises the history of each tale, especially from the textual point of view. • Iona and Peter Opie, 1985. The Singing Game (Oxford University Press). • Iona and Peter Opie, 1988. Tail Feathers of Mother Goose (Little Brown & Company). • Iona Opie, 1993. The People in the Playground. (Oxford University Press). • Iona and Peter Opie, 1997. ''Children's Games with Things'' (Oxford University Press). • Opie, Iona, and Moira Tatem, eds. 1989, A Dictionary of Superstitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ==See also==