With this evidence from the game itself, without reference to anything outside, it is possible to turn to custom to ascertain if there is anything still extant which might explain the origin of the game. Children copy the manners and customs of their elders. If they saw a custom periodically and often practised with some degree of ceremonial and importance, they would in their own way act in play what their elders do seriously.
Such a custom is the perambulation of boundaries, often associated with festive dances, courtship, and marriage. More particularly indicative of the origin of the game is the Helston Furry Dance—“About the middle of the day the people collect together to dance hand-in-hand round the streets, to the sound of the fiddler playing a particular tune, which they continue to do till it is dark. This is called a ‘Faddy.’ In the afternoon the gentility go to some farmhouse in the neighbourhood to drink tea, syllabab, &c., and return in a morrice-dance to the town, where they form a Faddy and dance through the streets till it is dark, claiming a right of going through any person’s house, in at one door and out at the other.”—Gent. Mag. Lib. Manners and Customs, p. 217. “In one, if not more, of the villages,” says Mr. Gregor (Folk-lore N.E. Scotland, p. 98), “when the marriage takes place in the home of the bride the whole of the marriage party makes the circuit of the village.” In South-Eastern Russia, on the eve of marriage the bride goes the round of the village, throwing herself on her knees before the head of each house. In an Indian custom the bride and bridegroom are conveyed in a particular “car” around the village.—Gomme, Folk-lore Relics, pp. 214, 215. According to Valle, a sixteenth century traveller, “At night the married couples passed by, and, according to their mode, went round about the city with a numerous company.”—Valle’s Travels in India (Hakluyt Soc.), p. 31.[6]
In these marriage customs there is ample evidence to suggest that the Indo-European marriage-rite contained just such features as are represented in this game, and the changes from rite to popular custom, from popular custom to children’s game, do much to suggest consideration of the evidence that folk-lore supplies.
This game is not mentioned by Halliwell or Chambers, nor, so far as I am aware, has it been previously printed or recorded in collections of English games. It appears in America as “Go round and round the Valley” (Newell, Games, p. 128).
See “[Thread the Needle].”
[6] Among the Ovahererí tribe, at the end of the festive time, the newly-married pair take a walk to visit all the houses of the “Werst.” The husband goes first and the wife closely follows him.—South African Folk-lore Journal, i. 50.
Round and Round went the Gallant Ship
I.