6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. 1.E.
book of prayers belonging to Mr. Francis Douce (_Sports_, p. 102). The bats in this drawing are nearly identical with modern golf-sticks, and Golf seems to be derived from this game. Peacock mentions it in his _Glossary of Manley and Corringham Words_. Forby has an interesting note in his _Vocabulary of East Anglia_, i. 14. He says, The bandy was made of very tough wood, or shod with metal, or with the point of the horn or the hoof of some animal. The ball is a knob or gnarl from the trunk of a tree, carefully formed into a globular shape. The adverse parties strive to beat it with their bandies through one or other of the goals.
4. After the trump card has been lawfully taken into the hand and the trump slip turned face down, the trump card must not be named nor the trump slip examined during the play of the deal; a player may, however, ask what the trump suit is. SEC. 5. If a player unlawfully looks at the trump slip, his highest or lowest trump may be called; if a player unlawfully names the trump card, or unlawfully shows the trump slip to his partner, his partner’s highest or lowest trump may be called. SEC. 6. These penalties can be inflicted by either adversary at any time during the play of the deal in which they are incurred before the player from whom the call can be made has played to the current trick; the call may be repeated at each or any trick until the card is played, but cannot be changed. SEC. 7.
In any position, only the striker is out on six thrown. In the last position, if five is thrown, the striker only is out, as the men cannot run. If there are men on first and second, and five is thrown, the striker is out, and the man on second is caught trying to steal third; while the man on first holds his base. If five is thrown when there are men on first and third, the striker is out, and the man on third is safe, but the man on first is caught trying to steal second. When bases are thrown, they are safe hits, and all the men on bases are advanced as many as the man at the bat throws. As soon as three men on each side have struck or been caught out by throwing five or six, the side is out, and all men left on bases count for nothing. As long as three men are not out, the side continues to send its men to the bat in regular order. GOING TO BOSTON. This game is known in the colonies as Yankee Grab, or Newmarket. Each player has three throws with three dice, and the highest die in each throw is laid aside.
The second verse thus terminates the game, with the players one by one reversing their position and facing the centre of ring as at first. In the Forest of Dean and Wakefield versions the action of the game is somewhat different. A child stands in the centre of the ring of children, without apparently taking much part in the game, except to name the children in turn. In the Wakefield version, however (Miss Fowler, No. xvii.), a little boy stands in the middle of a circle of girls who sing the first verse. At We ll all cou don together, all crouch down, as if in profound respect, then rising slowly, sing the next verse. After My pitcher and my can, each child mentions her own name. At Isn t ---- as nice as her? each mentions her sweetheart s name, and the child thus chosen goes into the circle. At the end of the fourth verse they all clap hands, and the one that is sweetheart to him in the middle kisses him.
--Halliwell s _Nursery Rhymes_, Games, cclxxxviii. (_b_) The Berrington version of this game is played as follows:--Two girls face each other, holding each other by both hands. Two others face each other, holding both hands across the other two. They see-saw backwards and forwards, singing the lines (fig. 1). One girl gets inside the enclosing hands (fig. 2), and they repeat till all four have popped under (fig. 3), when they jog up and down till they fall on the floor! (fig. 4). At Ellesmere only _two_ girls join hands, and as many pop under as they can encircle.
--A. B. Gomme. A probable explanation of this game is that it illustrates some of the practices and customs connected with fire-worship and the worship of the hearth, and that the pot is a magical one, and would only boil over when something wrong had occurred and the Mother s presence was necessary. The pot boils over directly a child is taken away, and appears to cease doing this when the Mother comes in. It is remarkable, too, that the Witch should want to borrow a light from the fire; the objection to the giving of fire out of the house is a well-known and widely-diffused superstition, the possession of a brand from the house-fire giving power to the possessor over the inmates of a house. The mention of the spitting on the hearth in the Sheffield version, and dirtying the hearth in the London version, give confirmation to the theory that the desecration of the fire or hearth is the cause of the pot boiling over, and that the spirit of the hearth or fire is offended at the sacrilege. The Witch, too, may be unable to get possession of a child until she has something belonging to the house. The journey of the Mother to the Witch s house in search of her children, the obstacles put in her path, and the mention of the spilling of blood on the threshold, are incidents which have great significance. Why the keeling or skimming of the contents of the pot should be so difficult a task for the eldest daughter that the Mother is obliged to come herself, is not so clear; the skimming is of course to prevent the pot boiling over, and the pot may be supposed to take the place of the Mother or Guardian of the hearth, and tell when misfortune or trouble is at hand.
Accordingly we decided that if a blue force, for example, has one or more men isolated, and a red force of at least double the strength of this isolated detachment moves up to contact with it, the blue men will be considered to be prisoners. That seemed fair; but so desperate is the courage and devotion of lead soldiers, that it came to this, that any small force that got or seemed likely to get isolated and caught by a superior force instead of waiting to be taken prisoners, dashed at its possible captors and slew them man for man. It was manifestly unreasonable to permit this. And in considering how best to prevent such inhuman heroisms, we were reminded of another frequent incident in our battles that also erred towards the incredible and vitiated our strategy. That was the charging of one or two isolated horse-men at a gun in order to disable it. Let me illustrate this by an incident. A force consisting of ten infantry and five cavalry with a gun are retreating across an exposed space, and a gun with thirty men, cavalry and infantry, in support comes out upon a crest into a position to fire within two feet of the retreating cavalry. The attacking player puts eight men within six inches of his gun and pushes the rest of his men a little forward to the right or left in pursuit of his enemy. In the real thing, the retreating horsemen would go off to cover with the gun, hell for leather, while the infantry would open out and retreat, firing. But see what happened in our imperfect form of Little War! The move of the retreating player began.
57. Dumb Crambo An undescribed game mentioned in Moor s _Suffolk Words_, p. 238. Dumb Motions Two sides are chosen, which stand apart from each other inside the line of their den. One side chooses a trade, and goes to the opposite side imitating working at the trade and giving the initial letters of it. If the opposite side guesses the name of the trade, the players run to their own den, being chased by their opponents. If any of the players are caught they must go to the opposite side. In turn the opposite side chooses a trade, and imitates the actions practised.--Cork, Ireland (Miss Keane). This is called An Old Woman from the Wood in Dorsetshire.
Wash them in a saucer. A saucer isn t big enough for father s shirt. Wash by the river side, wash by the river side. --Crockham Hill, Kent (Miss Chase). X. Please, mother, buy me a milking-can, Milking-can, milking-can, Please, mother, buy me a milking-can, My dear mother. Where can I get the money from? Sell father s feather bed. Where shall your father sleep? Sleep in the boys bed. Where shall the boys sleep? Sleep in the pig-sty. Where shall the pigs sleep? Sleep in the washing-tub.
A man placed at an angle may turn more than one line at a time. As soon as the board is filled, each man counts up his colour, and the one that has the majority wins the game. HALMA. This is played on a board with 256 squares, each player having nineteen men of distinguishing colours. At the start the men are placed in an enclosure at the corner of the board, called a “yard.” The object of the player is to get his men out of his own yard and into his adversary’s. The men move one square at a time, like a king at chess, unless a man gets to the square adjoining that occupied by another man with a space beyond it. Whether the adjoining man is his own or his adversary’s, the player can hop over it into the vacant space beyond, and he can make as many hops as there are men and spaces. This being so, a player will try to make “ladders” with his own men, placing them in a line diagonally, with a space between each, and will then hop his men over them all. As soon as he gets all his men into his adversary’s yard the game is ended.
As a rule, the trumps should be led at once, so as to exhaust the adversaries; but there are exceptional cases, the principal ones being:-- Do not lead trumps from the strong trump hand if it would be to your advantage to put the other hand in the lead with a plain suit, so as to let the trump lead come from the weaker hand to the stronger, as when a finesse in trumps is desirable. Do not lead trumps if you have no good plain suit, and can make more tricks by playing for a cross-ruff. Do not lead trumps if the weaker hand can trump some of your losing cards first. It often happens that a _=losing trump=_ can be used to win a trick before trumps are led. _=At No-trump.=_ The declarer’s first care in a no-trumper must be to select the suit that he will play for. Four simple rules cover this choice:-- 1. Always lead from the weak hand to the strong if the suit is not already established. 2. Play for the suit in which you have the greatest number of cards between the two hands, because it will probably yield the greatest number of tricks.
Make a fine curtsey and go your way. [They all curtsey and scamper off, and proceed to plan some mischief. Then they return.] Now where have you been? Up to Uncle John s. What for? Half a loaf, half a cheese, and half a pound of butter. Where s my share? Up in cupboard. Tisn t there, then! Then the cat eat it. And where s the cat? Up on the wood [_i.e._, the faggots].
| | |26.|Get a man to watch all| -- | -- | | |night. | | | |27.|Perhaps that man might| -- | -- | | |fall asleep. | | | |28.| -- | -- | -- | |29.| -- | -- |What has this poor | | | | |prisoner done? | |30.| -- | -- |Stole my watch and | | | | |lost my key. | |31.| -- | -- | -- | |32.
But if he has not the strength indicated in plain suits, he should propose, even if his trumps are higher, because it must be remembered that strong trumps do not compensate for weakness in plain suits. The reason for this is that from stand hands trumps should never be led unless there are three of them; they are to be kept for ruffing, and when you have to ruff it does not matter whether you use a seven or a Queen. The King of trumps is of course led; but a player does not stand on a hand containing the King. The first suit given is always the trump, and the next suit is always the one that should be led, beginning with the best card of it if there is more than one. The figures on the right show the number of hands in which the player or the dealer will win out of the 65,780 possible distributions of the twenty-six unknown cards. These calculations are taken, by permission of Mr. Charles Mossop, from the eighth volume of the “_Westminster Papers_,” in which all the variations and their results are given in full. PLAYER WINS. DEALER WINS. 2 [Illustration: 🃗 🃘 🂷 🂸 🂹] 47,768 18,012 3 [Illustration: 🂷 🂸 🂮 🂧 🃇] 46,039 19,741 4 [Illustration: 🂧 🂨 🃇 🃗 🃞] 43,764 22,016 5 [Illustration: 🃇 🃈 🃘 🃗 🂾] 45,374 20,406 6 [Illustration: 🃗 🃘 🃈 🃉 🂭] 44,169 21,611 7 [Illustration: 🂷 🂸 🃙 🃚 🃋] 43,478 22,302 8 [Illustration: 🂧 🂨 🂺 🂱 🃑] 44,243 21,537 9 [Illustration: 🃇 🃈 🂡 🂫 🂸] 44,766 21,014 10 [Illustration: 🃗 🃘 🂾 🂫 🃇] 44,459 21,321 11 [Illustration: 🂷 🂸 🂮 🃁 🃙] 44,034 21,746 12 [Illustration: 🂧 🂨 🃎 🃚 🂺] 43,434 22,346 13 [Illustration: 🃇 🃈 🂨 🂽 🃞] 44,766 21,014 14 [Illustration: 🃗 🃘 🃁 🂭 🂻] 46,779 19,001 15 [Illustration: 🂷 🂸 🃛 🃋 🂫] 45,929 19,851 The player should always stand on a hand containing three trumps, not including the King, and should lead the trump:-- 16 [Illustration: 🂷 🂸 🂹 🂧 🃇] 42,014 to 23,766 An example of a hand containing only one trump has already been given, and some hands are jeux de règle which contain no trumps.
Crooked dice are _=rung in=_ during the game, and the player should make it a point to examine the dice frequently if he has any suspicions. First see that each die has all six figures upon it, for some dice are _=dispatchers=_, made with double numbers, so as to secure higher throws than the natural average. Double fives are great favourites with backgammon sharps. The next thing is to place the dice together in pairs, to be sure that they are exactly the same height each way. If dice are not square they can be made to roll over and over on the same faces. The faces should then be tested to see that they are not convex, even in the slightest degree. Shaped dice are usually flat on the ace and six faces, especially in crap shooting. Each die should be held between the thumb and forefinger at its longest diameter, to see if it has any tendency to swing on a pivot, for if it does it is loaded. Even if the dice are transparent, it is no guarantee that they are not loaded in the spots. Loaded ivory dice soon get discoloured, and the presence of any darkness in the corners is usually a sign of the presence of mercury.