Childlore differs from the Folklore for Children in that while the latter deals with such things as nursery rhymes (sometimes called ‘Nursery Lore’) and ‘traditional toys’, which are more often passed from adults to children, Childlore refers to the folklore of children passed largely (though not exclusively) from child to child.
Childlore includes things such as children’s game rituals (like Counting Out, and Respite for example), as well as jokes, witticisms, and subversions of the adult world.
The folklorist Alice Berth Gomme (1853-1938), one of the founding members of the Folklore Society in London, is generally credited with separating Childlore as a distinct sub-genre in the wider world of Folklore in the 1890s.
Gomme seems to have had a battle with the Society in persuading them to make this distinction, though, and so she undertook a major study of children’s traditional games and songs herself, publishing the results in the massive two volume, ‘The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland’ (1894 and 1898) as a demonstration that such a move was valid (see photo).
In this she was largely successful.
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[photo - an image from a page of Gomme's two volume book on children's games showing variations on 'string games' also know as 'Cat's Cradle'.]
See also Folklore, Playlore, and Iona and Peter Opie (to come).
