Draw a Pail of Water.
A lump of sugar,
Grind your mother’s flour,
Three sacks an hour,
One in a rush, two in a crush,
Pray, old lady, creep under the bush (all jump round).
—Girton village, Cambridgeshire (Dr. A. C. Haddon).
Drop Handkerchief.
[[Vol. i. pp. 109-112]; “[Black Doggie],” vol. ii. p. 407.]
As played at Fochabers the game varies slightly in the way it is played from those previously described. The words are—
“I dropt it, I dropt it, a king’s copper next,
I sent a letter to my love, and on the way I dropt it.”
The players forming the ring are forbidden to look round. The one having the handkerchief endeavours to drop it at some one’s back without his or her knowledge, and then to get three times round the ring without being struck by the handkerchief. If the player does not manage this she has to sit in the centre of the ring as “old maid;” the object in this version evidently is not to let the player upon whom the handkerchief is dropped be aware of it.—Fochabers, N.E. Scotland (Rev. Dr. Gregor).