The different orders or arrangements must be taken from the hands of one player by another without disturbing the arrangement.—A. B. Gomme.
(b) Nares suggests that the proper name is “Cratch Cradle,” and is derived from the archaic word cratch, meaning a manger. He gives several authorities for its use. The first-made form is not unlike a manger. Moor (Suffolk Words) gives the names as cat’s cradle, barn-doors, bowling-green, hour-glass, pound, net, diamonds, fish-pond, fiddle. A supposed resemblance originated them. Britton (Beauties of Wiltshire, Glossary) says the game in London schools is called “Scratch-scratch” or “Scratch-cradle.”
| Cat’s Cradle | “Taking off” | Soldier’s Bed |
| “Taking off” | Candles | “Taking off” |
| Cat’s Cradle (upside down) | Cat’s Eyes | Fish. |
The game is known to savage peoples. Professor Haddon noted it among the Torres Straits people, who start the game in the same manner as we do, but continue it differently (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xix. p. 361); and Dr. Tylor has pointed out the significance of these string puzzles among savage peoples in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., ix. 26.
Cat-gallows
A child’s game, consisting of jumping over a stick placed at right angles to two others fixed in the ground.—Halliwell’s Dictionary.
(b) In Ross and Stead’s Holderness Glossary this is called “Cat-gallas,” and is described as three sticks placed in the form of a gallows for boys to jump over. So called in consequence of being of sufficient height to hang cats from. Also mentioned in Peacock’s Manley and Corringham Glossary and Elworthy’s West Somerset Words, Brogden’s Provincial Words, Lincs., Dickinson’s Cumberland Glossary, Atkinson’s Cleveland Glossary, Brockett’s North Country Words, Evans’ Leicestershire Glossary, Baker’s Northants Glossary, and Darlington’s South Cheshire Glossary. On one of the stalls in Worcester Cathedral, figured in Wright’s Archæological Essays, ii. 117, is a carving which represents three rats busily engaged in hanging a cat on a gallows of this kind.
Cat i’ the Hole
A game well known in Fife, and perhaps in other counties. If seven boys are to play, six holes are made at certain distances. Each of the six stands at a hole, with a short stick in his hand; the seventh stands at a certain distance holding a ball. When he gives the word, or makes the sign agreed upon, all the six change holes, each running to his neighbour’s hole, and putting his stick in the hole which he has newly seized. In making this change, the boy who has the ball tries to put it into an empty hole. If he succeeds in this, the boy who had not his stick (for the stick is the Cat) in the hole to which he had run is put out, and must take the ball. There is often a very keen contest whether the one shall get his stick, or the other the ball, or Cat, first put into the hole. When the Cat is in the hole, it is against the laws of the game to put the ball into it.—Jamieson.
(b) Kelly, in his Scottish Proverbs, p. 325, says, “‘Tine cat, tine game;’ an allusion to a play called ‘Cat i’ the Hole,’ and the English ‘[Kit-cat].’ Spoken when men at law have lost their principal evidence.”