Chapter 8

Then the smaller girls and boys have a number of games together:MOTHERS AND FATHERS, for instance, andTEACHERS, andSCHOOLS, andSOLDIERS, andNURSES, andHOSPITALS, andCARTS AND HORSES, andSHOPS, andCONVICTS AND WARDERS, andRAILWAY STATIONS, and games of that kind; andOLD DADDY WITCHES(also calledPOLLY WITCHorGRANNY WITCH) andSLEIGHSandI BOUGHT A DONKEYandI BOUGHT A PENNY DOLLandFIRE ENGINESandFROGSandWARandCAT AND MOUSEandCAT AND DOGandHERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSHandA.B.C.D.F.G.—what have I left out?—

“one silly kid says E., and then all the others says you’reit!” namely “he” (E.)—

andJACK HORNERandOLD AUNT SALLYandTIP-TOP IS A SWEETS STOREandTOM TIDDLER. You knowTOM TIDDLER, of course:

“I’m on old Tom Tiddler’s ground,Picking up gold and silver—”?

“I’m on old Tom Tiddler’s ground,

Picking up gold and silver—”?

There is also another game of this kind where they sort themselves into two parties calledORANGES AND LEMONSto the song of

Oranges and LemonsBells of Saint Clement’s—

Oranges and Lemons

Bells of Saint Clement’s—

Everybody knows that! In fact, children are not particular what they play at—

“I Can Play at Whipping top also i Play Hoopla. And i Play at Darts. And have a game at horses. And i Play at hide and seek and iplay with Cherry stones. And i Play at skiping rope and Jumping over the rope. And i like a game of Boxing and i like a game of foot Ball and i like a game of Cricket. And i like a game of rounders and i Play a Game of Blow Cards and i play Pigy Backs and i play at Going up on your hands against the wall. i Play at racing. i Play Drawfs i Play with my hoop and Stick i Play at Soldiers....”

And other children’s sports areMARY, MARYandWEEK DAYS(a ball-game played by eight of them) and another one calledSHEEP, SHEEP COME HOME, where one line of children represents the sheep, and another line the wolves; and behind the wolves stands the sheeps’ mother—many of these games are “mother-games”—who calls the sheep; butas they run to her they are caught by the wolves. It goes like this:

“Sheep Sheep come home,Afraid. What off. The Wolfs.Wolfs gone to DevenshireWont be home for seven yearSheep Sheep come home—”

“Sheep Sheep come home,

Afraid. What off. The Wolfs.

Wolfs gone to Devenshire

Wont be home for seven year

Sheep Sheep come home—”

andDAN, DAN THREAD YOU NEEDLEandWILL YOU GIVE US BREAD AND WINEand

GRANDMOTHER, GRANDMOTHER GRAY,May I go out to play?I won’t go near the waterTo drive the ducks away—

GRANDMOTHER, GRANDMOTHER GRAY,

May I go out to play?

I won’t go near the water

To drive the ducks away—

and

mother may I go out?No, it’s raining.No, it ain’t.Oh, all right then.Mother, I can’t get over the water.Well, swim.Can’t.Ride on a duck’s back—Quack! Quack!Where have you been?To Grandma’s.What did she give you?Slice of bread as big as my head,Lump of cheese as big as my knees,Glass of wine as big as my eyne,And a rusty farthing to go home with.Where’s my share?Up in the air.How shall I get it?Stand on a broken chair.Supposing I fall?Serve you right,For getting drunk on a Saturday night

mother may I go out?

No, it’s raining.

No, it ain’t.

Oh, all right then.

Mother, I can’t get over the water.

Well, swim.

Can’t.

Ride on a duck’s back—

Quack! Quack!

Where have you been?

To Grandma’s.

What did she give you?

Slice of bread as big as my head,

Lump of cheese as big as my knees,

Glass of wine as big as my eyne,

And a rusty farthing to go home with.

Where’s my share?

Up in the air.

How shall I get it?

Stand on a broken chair.

Supposing I fall?

Serve you right,

For getting drunk on a Saturday night

(the mother runs after the children and the first one caught takes her place)—

andTWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR(ring-game) andMATCHandRING-A-RING O’ ROSESandCHERRY-OGS(orCHERRY-BOBS) andCHERRY-PIES.

That reminds me that the last two must not be mixed up withCHERRY-BOB ARCH, a gambling game for bigger lads, quite simple but rather risky, played with cherry-stones and the lid of an old wooden box in which spaces and numbers have been marked out. You throw and—well, you must ask some of the boys higher up the street....

Now small children don’t invent games (it’s the older ones who do that) and so they carry on a good few which used to be played long ago and which the others don’t care forany more. That accounts for the queer sports you see among the kids. One of them isKING OF THE BARBARY, where one party captures a “castle” made of the other children holding their hands together. Another isGREEN MAN RISE-O, a very old game; it goes like this:—

“A boy has to get don and put some gass over him and run out and call out geren man rays and he got to fine [find] you—”

Perhaps this is clearer:—

“The way we play the game of greenman one of us lay down and cover his self with grass and the others run out and hide then they say greenman greenman rise up then he gets up and trys to catch them and the last one thats cort goes it—”

ForGREEN MAN RISE-Oyou have to go to the park, nowadays; but if you can’t go to the park, and want to play it in the street, this is how you do:—

“A boy as got to lay down and all the others have to put thier coats on him and then they have to say green man rise up and if he see a boy he as got to say one, two, three, and the last one as to go it—”

—in fact, it becomes likeDEAD MAN’S RISE, for lack of grass.

InCOCK ROBIN IS DEADall the children who are playing have to arm themselves with shields (for which they use saucepan-lids) and with bows and arrows; and some of the bows are worth looking at—made of string, they are, and half a barrel-hoop or a whalebone out oftheir big sister’s stays—if she wears any. Another of these sports is an old witch-game calledTO BECKLES TO BECKLES(?Beccles in Suffolk). It is played like this:

“The children form a ring, and two in the middle. One is a witch and the other is a girl. The children dance round once. Then the girl in the ring says, “To Beckles to Beckles to get some wood.” Old witch says: “What for.” Girl: “To boil the pot.” Witch: “What for.” Girl: “To cook the fowl.” Witch: “Where did you get it?” Girl: “From your yard.” At this a race ensues, until the girl is caught by the witch.”

Grottoes—May sport—are built heart-shaped or square or round, with an edge of grass (if you can getit) filled up with picture-cards and oyster-shells and old scent bottles or anything else that looks pretty. It’s just a dodge for mumping halfpennies; and not a bad one, either. They come up to you and say “Remember the grotto”—meaning Pay up. Speaking for myself, I generally forget the grotto—meaning Go to blazes. But some people pay up, and I once saw Mr. Perkins give them sixpence! He was a bit all right, that evening—must have been....

By far the best children’s games are those played with mud. Of mud you makePIES, andBRIDGES, andSTICKING-BRICKS(against a wall), andMUD-CARTS(played with a tin-can), andWELLS, andTUNNELS, andFLOWER-POTS, andCASTLES—in fact, anything you please. There’s nothing like mud, when all is said and done,and it’s a perfect shame there isn’t more mud about, nowadays; or sand, at least. You should see them go for it, when the streets are up. Because the park is too far away for most of them. And then, the fact of the matter is, our boys don’t much like playing in the park, anyhow; and the few who care about it aren’t allowed to go, because their mothers say “You’ve got no clothes.” They prefer the streets; and that’s the truth, though you wouldn’t believe it. I can’t stop to tell you why. For one thing, the keeper is always coming up in the park and interfering; next, they can’t find kerbs and paving-stones there; next, it makes them wild to see other boys with bats and things, when they have none....

Some of these games used to come in at fixed seasons, asTOPSandMARBLESandPICTURESandBUTTONSstill do; they came regularly, like the ice-cream jack or the lavender-boy or the rate-collector or the measles or the hoky-poky man or the carol-singers. But things are changing.Skippingused to begin on Good Friday, and now they skip half the year round;HOOPSused to come in at Christmas sharp, and here they are already. Danged if I know the reason why. But there it is.Grottoesought to be played on St. James’ day, and I’ve seen them in mid-winter. The same with theseMUD-PIES. You would think they belonged naturally to the wet season. Not a bit of it! Not nowadays, at all events. If their clay is too dry in summer, they manage to make it moist again, even without waiting for the rain. Unseasonable, I call it....

What I said about paving-stones reminds me ofMARBLES. We used to play them in the winter, on the pavement. But marlies are going down in the world, that’s certain. It’s a good while since I played, but I still remember the names of a few kinds—Toms, and Alleys, and Glarnies, and Miggies; and Forty-eighter and Twenty-fourer and Twelver and Sixer and Fourer and Three-er. You hardly ever hear of a Forty-eighter nowadays. The smaller stone marbles were called Tich; those you got out of lemonade bottles were Glass-eye; they also had names, which I’ve forgotten, according to the different coloured marks. We used to play atNOCKS(that is,KNUCKS: because your knuckles had to touch the ground), andMARBLE-BOARD, andSKITTLES, andGLASGOW, andTHREE HOLES, andNIXY’S IN THE HOLE:I TAKE, andGUTTER MARBLES, andROW MARBLES, andUP THE ALLEY, andSPICK AND SPAN, andDOB ’EM, andTIP, andFOUR HOLES, andNEAREST THE WALL, andPICKING THE PLUMS, andGOING UP, andBOWLING IN THE HOLEandHIT IT LEAVE ITandHIT IT HAVE ITandTHROWINGS OUTandSTAYSandHITS AND SPANSandFIVE TENandPICKING NUMBERSandBAGATELLEandIN THE RINGandPITCHINGandFOLLOW ONandKILLINGandPORKYandTHROW THE FARTHESTandSOME OR NONEandBRIDGE-BOARD.Bridge-boardwas played with a diagram looking like a row of railway arches; and I might explain the game if I could draw diagrams, which I can’t. InBOUNCE EYEeach player gave a certain number of marbles which were pooled in a ring. Then one of them held a marble to his eyeand dropped it among them; if any others were knocked out of the ring, he kept them; if none, his own marble went into the pool. There used also to be games that you played with marbles in a flat iron ring—the rings cost 2d. if you bought them, but you generally got them off the barges for nothing—games likeRINGUMSandCHIPPING OUT OF THE RING.

But, as I was saying, marbles are not played as they used to be. The police are getting more interfering every day; they tell the boys to move on and not block up the pavement, and that interrupts them in the middle of a game and makes them half wild; and if you don’t clear off at once, they kick your marbles into the gutter where they get lost down a drain, and that makes you altogether mad. Aunt Eliza explainsthings by saying that marble-games wear out boys’ clothes at the knees and that mothers are growing to be “more careful in such matters.” More fussy, I call it. And then she says—and I say what she says simply can’t be believed, though it would prove whatIsaid—she says—and I say she says these things not because she knows them but just because she believes them, or believes she believes them, or believes she ought to believe them, like some people do; or perhaps not even that; because how is she toknowthem: that’s what I want to know?—she says that marbles—and I say it’s the worst of Aunt Eliza that when she says a thing you never know exactly where you are; and, upon my word, I don’t believe she knows either; nor does anybody else, for that matter; and, what’s more,nobody really cares; and it wouldn’t much matter if they did, which is just as well—she says that marbles—and I say it all comes from wasting her time running all over the place in a feather hat and silk garters, ever since she came in for that little bit and left off trying to be schoolmistress, and messing about the way she has done with children’s homes and a lot of old cranks, instead of doing some honest work at home—she says that marbles, and not only marbles butHOOPS, used to be played by the big boys at the public schools.

Hoops: that’s what she says. And I say: hoops be blowed. With all respect to Aunt Eliza, I might have swallowed marbles, but I can’t swallow hoops; not on this side of the year after next. I know this, at least, that if a big lad were seen playing, or ever had been seen playing,with a hoop, down our way, except, perhaps, an iron one—why, his own parents wouldn’t know him again, when he got home, if he ever did, which I rather doubt; and that’s all there is to it. His father would ask whether some poor loony had been trying to box with a traction-engine going at full steam, and his mother would want to know what on earth made somebody put a lot of something through the sausage-machine without sifting out all those buttons first. But that’s neither here nor there, except in so far as it shows what Aunt Eliza’s explanations are worth. Mr. Perkins, of Framlingham Brothers (a good old firm—and a nice place he’s got, too)—he’s an understandable kind of gentleman and he gets talking about things after his second pint of Burton and he says, speaking ofmarbles, that he’s noticed the same thing as I have. And when I asked himwhymarbles are going out of fashion, he says:

“Marbles are going out of fashion”, he says, “because they’re getting unpopular. That’s why. And I happen to know this”, says he, “because our little Percy he tells me that shopmen don’t stock them the way they did because they know that boys don’t ask for them the way they did and boys don’t ask for them the way they did because they know they couldn’t get them the way they did because shopmen don’t stock them the way they did. Which proves what I said. Trust me”, says he, “when things begin to lose their popularity, they are sure to become unfashionable sooner or later, whether it be games, or clothes, or drinks,orreligions.For instance”, says he, “take Nonconformity”. But I wasn’t taking Nonconformity just then, and when I tried to keep him to the point, and askedwhymarlies, and just marlies, were getting unpopular, he scratches his chin which hadn’t been shaved for the inside of a week, and has another go at his tankard, and puts it down with a bit of a bang, emphatic-like—a sure sign, with Mr. Perkins—and then he looks at me and says:

“Marbles are getting unpopular”, says he, “because they’re going out of fashion. That’s what’s the matter with marbles and with a good many other things as well. Take Nonconformity”, and when I told him I was only taking bitter that night, he has another pull at his Burton, and at last he says, casual-fashion:

“Marbles are not stimulatingenough for modern life. It’s the same with religions,don’t you see? Now take Nonconformity”—and God’s truth! I had to take Nonconformity for the better part of an hour, after all.

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