Included in box is a black Meg tinwhistle in the key of D and sheet with "Victorian Singing Games" and fingering chart.

The Meg is almost identical to the UK manufactured Sweetone; the difference according to Clarke is "budget raw materials and a modified production process". Clake's goal with the Meg is to "bring affordable music to the masses". Like the Sweetone, the Meg combines the classic conical Clarke body with a modern plastic mouthpiece designed by Michael Copeland, a respected maker of fine Irish whistles.

From the back of the box:

"In the time of Queen Victoria, there was a huge repertoire of singing games that little children sang and played in their playgrounds or in the streets. There were, of course, no cinema, radio, computer games or T.V. so the children found their own amusement, in which these singing games played a large part. The tunes were easy to sing and remember. The Clarke pennywhistle, being inexpensive, was the one melodic instrument which many children could afford to own. It was the instrument of the streets and playgrounds. It is said that it even got its name because children played it for pennies in the streets.

Tinwhistle playing was, to a large part, by ear. The children picked out the tunes they knew on the tinwhistle. Singing game tunes, by virtue of their simplicity, were easy to play by ear and the player would have been able to accompany his or her friends whilst they sang their singing game songs. With immigration in the last century, singing games and Clarke’s pennywhistles went to the US and kept their popularity with the children. Sometimes the words changed to suit the part of the country. For example, “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush” became “Here we go round the Barberry Bush”.

Today singing games have all but disappeared. When I was a child in the 20’s we were still enjoying them, both in the playground and in the school hall with out teachers. In my work as a music advisor, I was saddened to see little children rushing around the playground kicking each other with the “Kung Fu” attacks they had seen on the T.V., instead of the innocent games that I enjoyed as a child. I introduced singing games to some of the teachers in my primary schools and they taught them to their pupils who really enjoyed performing them.

Here we offer a selection of singing games together with their tunes arranged for easy performance on our Meg tinwhistle. Give the young children some of the fun and leisure of a bygone age and they will not only enjoy these singing games but they will become pleasant memories for them to carry into adulthood – as indeed they were to me.”

Norman Dannatt, Music Advisor

Clarke Tinwhistle Company History

The Clarke Tinwhistle Company began in 1843 when Robert Clarke, a poor English farm laborer who played a wooden whistle, devised a way to make a whistle out of the then newly invented tin plate. His first prototype turned out so well that he decided to begin a business manufacturing these instruments. Together with his son, he walked all the way from Coney Weston to Manchester, pushing his tools and materials in a handbarrow.

On the way he stopped in villages where there were markets and made the tinwhistles. These he sold to villagers. Sometimes he met navigators, Irish laborers who were building railways and canals, and sold his tinwhistles to them. These Irishmen took them back to Ireland, where the English tinwhistles rapidly became Ireland's favorite folk instrument.

When Robert reached Manchester he set up his factory in a shed and soon became a successful manufacturer. Later he built two houses, a factory, and a church in New Moston, a nearby village.