With Fingers and String.

This leaves over a few games which do not come under either of these chief heads, and appear now to be only forms of pure amusement. These are:—

In order to show the importance of this classification, let me first refer to the games of skill. These are (1) where one individual plays with some articles belonging to himself against several other players who play with corresponding articles belonging to them; (2) where one player attempts to gain articles deposited beforehand by all the players as stakes or objects to be played for. These games are played with buttons, marbles, cherry-stones, nuts, pins, and pence. In the second group, each player stakes one or more of these articles before beginning play, which stakes become the property of the winner of the game. The object of some of the games in the first group is the destruction of the article with which the opponent plays. This is the case with the games of “conkers” played with nuts on a string, and peg-top; the nuts and top are broken, if possible, by the players, to prevent their being used again, the peg of the top being retained by the winner as a trophy. The successful nut or top has the merit and glory of having destroyed previously successful nuts or tops. The victories of the one destroyed are tacked on and appropriated by each victor in succession. So we see a nut or a top which has destroyed another having a record of, say, twenty-five victories, taking these twenty-five victories of its opponent and adding them to its own score. In like manner the pegs of the tops slain in peg-top are preserved and shown as trophies. That the destruction of the implements of the game, although not adding to the immediate wealth of the winner, does materially increase his importance, is manifest, especially in the days when these articles were comparatively much more expensive than now, or when it meant, as at one time it must have done, the making of another implement.

These games are of interest to the folk-lorist, as showing connection with early custom. We know that playing at games for stakes involving life or death to the winner, or the possession of the loser’s magical or valuable property or knowledge, is not only found in another branch of folk-lore, namely, folk-tales, but there is plenty of evidence of the early belief that the possession of a weapon which had, in the hands of a skilful chief, done great execution, would give additional skill and power to the person who succeeded in obtaining it. When I hear of a successful “conker” or top being preserved and handed down from father to son,[19] and exhibited with tales of its former victories, I believe we have survivals of the form of transmission of virtues from one person to another through the means of an acquired object. I do not think that the cumulative reckoning and its accompanying ideas would occur to modern boys, unless they had inherited the conception of the virtue of a conquered enemy’s weapon being transferred to the conqueror’s.

[19] I know of one nut which was preserved and shown to admiring boys as a conqueror of 1000.

Other games of skill are those played by two or more players on diagrams or plans. Many of these diagrams and plans are found scratched or carved on the stone flooring or walls of old churches, cathedrals, and monastic buildings, showing that the boys and men of the Middle Ages played them as a regular amusement—probably monks were not averse to this kind of diversion in the intervals of religious exercise; plans were also made on the ground, and the games played regularly by shepherds and other people of outdoor occupation. We know this was so with the well-known “[Nine Men’s Morris]” in Shakespeare’s time, and there is no reason why this should not be the case with others, although “[Nine Men’s Morris]” appears to have been the favourite. These diagram games are primitive in idea, and simple in form. They consist primarily of two players trying to form a row of three stones in three consecutive places on the plan; the one who first accomplishes this, wins. This is the case with “[Kit-Cat-Cannio]” (better known as “[Noughts and Crosses]”) “[Corsicrown]” and “[Nine Men’s Morris].”

Now, in “[Noughts and Crosses]” the simplest form of making a “row of three,” where only two players play, and in another diagram game called “[Tit-Tat-Toe],” it is possible for neither player to win, and in this case the result is marked or scored to an unknown or invisible third player, who is called “Old Nick,” “Old Tom,” or “Old Harry.” In some versions this third player is allowed to keep all the marks he registers, and to win the game if possible; in others, the next successful player takes “Old Nick’s” score and adds it to his own. Here we have an element which needs explanation, and it is interesting to remind oneself of the primitive custom of assigning a certain proportion of the crops or pieces of land to the devil, or other earth spirit, which assignment was made by lot. It seems to me that a game in which an invisible player takes part must come from an era in which unknown spirits were believed to take part in people’s lives, the interpretation of such part being obtained by means of divination.