(b) One boy lies down and personates Booman. Other boys form a ring round him, joining hands and alternately raising and lowering them, to imitate bell-pulling, while the girls who play sit down and weep. The boys sing the first verse. The girls seek for daisies or any wild flowers, and join in the singing of the second verse, while the boys raise the prostrate Booman and carry him about. When singing the third verse the boys act digging a grave, and the dead boy is lowered. The girls strew flowers over the body. When finished another boy becomes Booman.
(c) This game is clearly dramatic, to imitate a funeral. Mr. Doe writes, “I have seen somewhere [in Norfolk] a tomb with a crest on it—a leek—and the name Beaumont,” but it does not seem necessary to thus account for the game.
Boss-out
A game at marbles. Strutt describes it as follows:—“One bowls a marble to any distance that he pleases, which serves as a mark for his antagonist to bowl at, whose business it is to hit the marble first bowled, or lay his own near enough to it for him to span the space between them and touch both the marbles. In either case he wins. If not, his marble remains where it lay, and becomes a mark for the first player, and so alternately until the game be won.”—Sports, p. 384.
Boss and Span
The same as “[Boss-out].” It is mentioned, but not described, in Baker’s Northamptonshire Glossary.
Boys and Girls
[[Play]]
