When the Round Round Robin, Comes Bob Bob Bobbing Along....

Round Robin Pen Pal Letters

Have you ever heard of round robins as part of the pen pal hobby? I thought I knew something about round robins –

One person writes a family letter and sends it to the next person on the list. That person also writes a letter and mails it, along with the first letter, to the third person on the list…and so on down the line.

When the correspondence returns to the first person, she removes her original letter, reads all the other correspondence, writes a new letter—and forwards it again to #2 on the list. This may be one of those great pastimes for pen-pals that has become somewhat a lost art, and yet, if you have ever participated in a round robin, you know what fun it can be and what great anticipation one experiences receiving the packet in the mail.

One of our ITN subscribers says that she has participated in several round robins; one was a group of four women living in California, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma –who were all interested in collecting recipes and cookbooks. This was B.C. (before computers) and e-mail…in fact, only one person in the group owned a typewriter.

Another round robin I’ve heard about was a family affair – also long before computers, email, or cell phones made it so much easier to keep in touch with scattered family members. Mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews participated in the family round robin which sometimes took a year to make the rounds and eventually got lost along the way.

What I didn’t know—Google.com was quick to straighten me out—is that round robins come in many shapes and sizes; there are flower and garden round robins, including one for the American Primrose Society with members exchanging general information about primroses, or they may focus on one particular species or hybrid.

The American Begonia Society also has a round robin with members from all over the world, who like to talk about their begonias and ask questions about them. Each group is called “a flight” and since a robin may take several months to make its rounds, many people choose to join several robins. According to the American Begonia Society, about eight members belong to a flight and there are currently more than 100 flights with topics ranging from “arid climate begonia growing” to “windowsill begonias”. There are also round robins for people who are interested in heirloom flowers and vegetables and exchange packets of seeds.

There are round robins for groups of stitchers who work on each other’s projects and may involve many different themes, such as Christmas, flowers, seasons, etc. Quilters also enjoy participating in round robins.

What surprised me most is that there are numerous round robins for sports enthusiasts.

One of the most notable, perhaps, are round robins enjoyed by weekend tennis players. It’s simply a tournament or match with three or more players in which all of the players play each other at least once. But the round robins are not limited to tennis; there are round robins for racquet and many other events including chess, bridge, soccer and boxing!

For writers, you may be interested in joining a fiction round robin, which begins with the first person in the robin writing a chapter and then sending it on to the next person who writes the second chapter.

And where does the term “round robin” come from?

It may be one of the oldest expressions in the English language! It first appeared in print in England in 1546 and was a term of ridicule applied to Holy Communion. Found in a translation of Calvin’s, “A faithful and most godly treatyse concernynge the most sacred sacrament of the blessed body and the blood of Christ: “Certayne fonde talkers applye to this mooste holye sacramente, names of despite and reproche, as to call it Jake in the boxe, and round roben, and suche other not onley fond but also blasphemous names”. Why this term was applied to the sacrament of communion is unclear. (From Mavens’ Word of the Day).

By the early 17th century, however, round robin had another meaning, this one more understandable. The Cassell Dictionary of Slang says it was a “document typically a complaint or petition in which the signatories place their names in a circle, thus hiding any form of hierarchy”. The 1796 edition of “A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” limits its use to sailors, defining it as a mode of signing remonstrances practiced by sailors on board the king’s ships. When the names were written in a circle, it could not be pinpointed who was the ringleader. For centuries, then, a round robin was considered a document signed by many persons, either in a circle or in alphabetical order, so that all responsibility for the document was shared.

So where did “robin” come from? The 1997 American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms states that “the source for robin has been lost”. World Wide Words states, “We don’t know for sure where (the robin) comes from although we’re pretty sure it has nothing to do with the bird, nor any person named Robin….some books suggest that this comes from the French expression of rond rouban for an earlier version of the same idea in which names were written on an endless ribbon attached to the document. It was only at the end of the 19th century that it was applied to tournaments in which every contestant plays every other at least once…”

Inky Trail members might want to consider forming letter-writing round robins. These are especially enjoyable since not everyone has a computer and access to email.