GAMES.
The annual calendar of dates when certain of the pastimes and songs of our street children become fashionable is an uncertain one, yet games have their seasons most wonderfully and faithfully marked. Yearly all boys seem to know the actual time for the revivification of a custom, whether it be of whipping tops, flirting marbles, spinning peg-tops, or playing tip-cat or piggy. This survival of custom speaks eloquently of the child influence on civilisation, for the conservation of the human family may be found literally portrayed in the pastimes, games, and songs of the children of our streets.
Curious relics of past cruelties are shadowed forth in many of the present games—some of which are not uninteresting. The barbarous custom of whipping martyrs at the stake is perpetuated by the game of whip-top. In a black-letter book in the British Museum, date 15—(?) occurs this passage—
"I am good at scourging of my toppe,
You would laugh to see me morsel the pegge,
Upon one foot I can hoppe,
And dance trimly round an egge."
The apprentices of the London craftsmen followed the popular diversion of cock-throwing on Shrove Tuesday and tossing pancakes in the frying-pan—the latter custom is still kept up at Westminster School. Both bear allusion to the sufferings and torments of men who died for conscience sake.
Dice and pitch-and-toss, also modern games of the present gutter children, in primitive times were the ways and means adopted by the learned to consult the oracles. Much in the same way the Scotch laddie and wee lassie play—
"Dab a prin in my lottery-book;
Dab ane, dab two, dab a' your prins awa',"
by sticking at random pins in their school-books, between the leaves of which little pictures are placed. This is the lottery-box, the pictures the prizes, and the pins the forfeits.
Another favourite Scotch game is—
"A' the birds of the air, and the days of the week."
Girls' pleasures are by no means so diversified as those of boys. It would be considered a trifle too effeminate were the little men to amuse themselves with their sisters' game of Chucks—an enchanting amusement, played with a large-sized marble and four octagonal pieces of chalk. Beds, another girlish game, is also played on the pavement—a piece of broken pot, china or earthenware, being kicked from one of the beds or divisions marked out on the flags to another, the girls hopping on one leg while doing so. It is a pastime better known as Hop Scotch, and is played in every village and town of the British Isles, varying slightly in detail. The rhymes used by street children to decide who is to begin the game are numerous.
The Scotch version of a well-known one is given below—
"Zickety, dickety, dock, the mouse ran up the nock,
The nock struck one, down the mouse ran,
Zickety, dickety, dock."
"Anery, twaery, tickery, seven,
Aliby, crackeby, ten or eleven;
Pin pan, muskidan,
Tweedlum, twodlum, twenty-one."
Amongst the notable men in the world's history who have depicted children's games, St. Luke the Evangelist tells in a pleasant passage of how Jesus likened the men of His day to children sitting in the market-place and calling to their playmates—
"We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced;
We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."
A vivid picture, illustrating puerile peevishness.
In the thousands of years that street plays have been enacted by the youngsters, no poet's, philosopher's, nor teacher's words have been more to the point. Every child wants to take the most prominent part in a game, but all cannot be chief mourners, else there will be no sympathising weepers.
"Who'll be chief mourner? I, said the dove,
I'll mourn for my love."
To-day things are better arranged, a counting-out rhyme settles the question of appointment to the coveted post. Like the
"Zickety, dickety, dock, the mouse ran up the clock"
of the north-country children.
"Whoever I touch must be he"
ends and begins the counting-out verse of the Southern youngsters, which runs as follows—
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
All good children go to heaven.
My mother says the last one I touch must be he."
Of the numerous variations of this rhyme the one at present in demand by London children is—
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
All good children go to heaven.
A penny on the water, twopence on the sea,
Threepence on the railway, and out goes she."
Another and more generally known rhyme of—
"1, 2, 3, 4,
Mary at the cottage door
Eating cherries off a plate,
5, 6, 7, 8,"
is also used for the same purpose.
But are there no peevish children to-day? None sulking in nursery or playground over games just as the little Israelites did 1900 years ago in the market-place at Nain?
Remember the lesson of old—
"We have piped, and ye have not danced;
We have mourned to you, and ye have not wept."