Two rows of people sit on chairs face to face on each side of a door, leaving just sufficient space between the lines for a player to pass. At the end of the rows furthest from the door sits the “Queen of Sheba,” with a veil or shawl over her head. A player, hitherto unacquainted with the game, is brought to the door, shown the Queen, and told to go up between the rows, after being blindfolded, to kiss her, taking care, meanwhile, to avoid treading on the toes of the people on each side the alley leading to the lady. While his mind is diverted by these instructions, and by the process of blindfolding, the Queen gives up her seat to “the King,” who has been lurking in the background. He assumes the veil and receives the kiss, to the amusement of every one but the uninitiated player.
—Anderby, Lincolnshire, and near the Trent, Nottinghamshire (Miss M. Peacock).
Ragman
An ancient game, at which persons drew by chance poetical descriptions of their characters, the amusement consisting—as at modern games of a similar kind—in the peculiar application or misapplication of the verses so selected at hazard by the drawers.—Halliwell’s Dictionary. Halliwell goes on to say that the meaning of this term was first developed by Mr. Wright in his Anecdota Literaria, 1844, where he has printed two collections of ancient verses used in the game of “Ragman.” Mr. Wright conjectures that the stanzas were written one after another on a roll of parchment; that to each stanza a string was attached at the side, with a seal or piece of metal or wood at the end; and that when used the parchment was rolled up with all the strings and their seals hanging together, so that the drawer had no reason for choosing one more than another, but drew one of the strings by mere chance, and which he opened to see on what stanza he had fallen. If such were the form of the game, we can very easily imagine why the name was applied to a charter with an unusual number of seals attached to it, which, when rolled up, would present exactly the same appearance. Mr. Wright is borne out in his opinion by an English poem, termed “Ragmane roelle,” printed from MS., Fairfax, 16:—
“My ladyes and my maistresses echone,
Lyke hit unto your humbyble wommanhede,
Resave in gré of my sympill persone
This rolle, which, withouten any drede,
Kynge Ragman me bad me sowe in brede,
And cristyned yt the merour of your chaunce;
Drawith a strynge, and that shal streight yow leyde
Unto the verry path of your governaunce.”
That the verses were generally written in a roll may perhaps be gathered from a passage in Douglas’s Virgil:—
“With that he raucht me ane roll: to rede I begane,
The royetest ane ragment with mony ratt rime.”
Halliwell also quotes the following:—
“Venus, whiche stant withoute lawe,
In non certeyne, but as men drawe
Of Ragemon upon the chaunce,
Sche leyeth no peys in the balaunce.”
—Gower, MS. Society of Antiquaries, 134, 244.