(c) The tunes of all versions are very similar. The tune of the [Newbury game] (Miss Kimber) is the same as the first part of the [Ogbourne tune] printed (Mr. H. S. May); that from [Nottingham] (Miss Youngman) is the same as the first part of the [London version]. This is also the case with the [Hanbury, Staffs.] (Miss E. Hollis) and [Fernham and Longcot game]. What difference there is is very slight. The [Platt, Kent, game] (Miss Burne), is sung to the same tune as “[Green Gravel],” given ante, p. 170. The first portion only of the tune is repeated for all verses sung after the first verse. The Barnes game is sung to the same tune as the [Earls Heaton] (Mr. Hardy), which is printed ante. A version played at Barnes is almost identical with the [Southampton version], and another collected by Miss Thoyts in Berkshire (Antiquary, vol. xxvii. p. 193) is similar to the [Hanbury version]. The first lines run—Choose your lover; Open the gates; Go to church, love; Kneel down, love; Say your prayers, love; Put on the ring; Stand up, love; In the ring, love; Kiss together, love.
(d) The words of all the versions are sufficiently similar to analyse without a special form. The game appears to be purely a love and marriage game, and has probably had its origin in a ballad, and this idea is strengthened by the fact that only one version ([London]) has the marriage formula sung at the end, and this is probably an arbitrary addition. The lover is represented as lonely and disconsolate, and the remedy suggested is to choose a sweetheart. The marriage ceremony is of the simplest description—the clasping of hands and the kissing within the circle probably implying the betrothal at a spot sacred to such functions, similar to the Standing Stones of Stenness. Whatever may have been the original intention of these stones, they came in more recent times to be the resort of lovers, who joined their right hands through the hole in the altar stones in the belief that this ceremony would add additional solemnity to the betrothal. Miss Gordon Cumming, in her Tour in the Hebrides, mentions the fact of the marriage ceremony being of the simplest—a man and woman standing facing each other and clasping hands over a particular stone. Walking arm-in-arm is a sign in Dorsetshire that a couple are married. The mention of the “roast beef and plum pudding” for dinner has probably had its origin in the wedding dinner or breakfast, and the inviting of friends to assemble for the wedding dinner. The word “Isabella” may have been originally something quite different from the name of a girl. I am inclined to think the word was not the name of a person at all; possibly it was something addressed to a particular person in words the sense of which are now lost, and the nearest idea to it was this name. The same thing may also apply to the word “farewell,” and hence the incongruity of the first few lines in nearly all versions.[Addendum]
Jack’s Alive.
A number of people sit in a row, or on chairs round a parlour. A lighted wooden spill or taper is handed to the first, who says—
Jack’s alive, and likely to live;
If he dies in your hand you’ve a forfeit to give.
The one in whose hand the light expires has to pay a forfeit. As the spill is getting burnt out the lines are said very quickly, as everybody is anxious not to have to pay the forfeit.—Addy’s Sheffield Glossary.
At Egan, in Derbyshire, a number of persons sit round a fire; one of them lights a stick, twirls it round, and says—
Little Nanny Cockerthaw,
What if I should let her fa’?
The others reply—
Nine sticks and nine stones
Shall be laid on thy bare back bones
If thou shouldst let fa’
Little Nanny Cockerthaw.