1. There is a copy of Monkey by Wu Cheng‘en, translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley, in Hughes’ library at Emory University. Monkey is a michievous, magical, immortal trickster, who accompanies the Buddhhist monk, Triptaka, to India to collect the Buddhist scriptures and bring them back to China. The story is well–loved in China.

2. In the ‘uncollected’ poem ‘The Pike’, the fish under the mirror surface of a reservoir is also from another world. It has “Sailed out of the sun”, and it has “A smile / Of the deafness of earth // Making the skull creak” (THCP.701–2).

3. The second essay, which has the same title and theme, but is substantially different in parts, appeared in Children’s Literature in Education, APS Publications, March, 1970, pp.55–70.

4. Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Bronte, Dent, 1919. pp.6–7.

5. Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan, Hodder and Stoughton, 1911. Peter and a group of lost boys live on a Neverland island where the pirate, Captain Hook, is pursued by the ‘ticking’ crocodile. The text can be read at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-h/16-h.htm

6. No game of this nature is listed, for example, by Iona and Peter Opie in their extensive study of the play of English children, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, Oxford University Press, 1970. Schools, however, may have adapted the story as play for their young pupils to perform. There is a photograph of Hughes acting as ‘a nobleman’ in one unidentified Primary School play: http://penninehorizons.org/items/show/3426

7. ‘Macadam’ is still a commonly used word in Yorkshire for tar–sealed surfaces, but its etymology and its connection with school playground in the poem suggest Man’s ancient lineage as son of Adam.

8. Scigaj.245.