And that’s about all the games I can think of, just now.
Wait a bit. There are the chalk-games. These are what you see marked out in white or coloured chalk on the pavement or asphalt—summer games, of course, and pretty common everywhere. Ordinary HOP-SCOTCH, for instance, and LONG HOP-SCOTCH, and FRENCH HOP-SCOTCH, and TIDDLEDEWINK, and PUDDING AND BEEF (or STONE HOP-SCOTCH, where you have to keep a stone balanced on your head or open hand as you hop through). Then there’s WRIGGLY-WORM (also called WHIRLY-WHIRLY, or WIGGLY-WOGGLY, or SNAIL), and SQUARES, and NUMBERS, and DOT-BOXES (or DOTS) and ALL OVER THE WORLD, and STEPPING-STONES, and ZIG-ZAG. They play NOUGHTS AND CROSSES out of doors (OXEN-CROSSES, they call it; which shows how they twist the names about); other chalk-games are MAPS, and LONDON, and BATTLEMENTS, and SNAKES, and BABY, and BILL BAILY.
They also play BODY-BUILDING of different kinds, and one of the most complicated of these chalk-games is now called GERMANS-ENGLISH. It begins with a design shaped rather like a coffin with fields of squares in the middle and a field of them running along each side, and a field for “lost” at the top and another field at the bottom which I don’t remember the use of, and two starting-points at each end of the bottom. Only two boys can play; they throw their nickers by turns into the middle fields, and if they land on a line it counts nothing, but whoever lands in a field can begin building a soldier in the corresponding side-field; first his head; then (for another throw into the right field) his body; then (for another) his legs; then his rifle; then a bullet at the end of his rifle. Once the bullet is there, that soldier stands for good. But while he is still being built, the other boy, if he throws well, can set up another soldier in the corresponding side-field in shorter time, and once that soldier has his bullet—why, he can shoot the other fellow opposite, if he’s not complete, and finish him off for good. So there are all the time soldiers building in the different side-fields on both sides, each growing up as fast as he can, and all shooting each other whenever they get the chance; and the winner is the boy who has most soldiers alive at the end. And you can see from this that it’s a complicated business and shows what youngsters can think out with a bit of chalk (if somebody didn’t think it out for them); but to explain it properly would require at least twenty diagrams to show the game in its different stages, and I can’t draw diagrams—never could; which is a pity.
The small children have a chalk-game all to themselves called POLLY POLLY WHAT’S THE TIME, where they draw a sort of clock on the pavement and cover up parts of it with their jackets or anything else.
The girls have another, BOOTS, SHOES, TIPS, OR NAILS, in which one of them draws a square on the pavement containing room for the four letters b. t. s. or n.; she writes one of them down and then covers it up; the others must guess which letter it is, and they score up how many correct guesses each one has had. Boys sometimes play this, but not often.
And then the well-known CHALK-CHASE. There are different kinds of CHALK-CHASE, such as CONVICTS AND WARDERS (or TRACKING THE CONVICTS) and SCOUTS; but the real old CHALK-CHASE, as played by my friends of the “Char-charcoal-chalk-chase-club”, goes like this:—
“You pick parteis and then they clip for First outing. Each player has a peice of chalk which he has to draw arroes the hounds follow & they must cross out the arroes until the Others are caught then its the Others turn”.
Played it yourself, maybe?
And there! I nearly forgot some of the best of all these sports: the touch games. There’s OFF-GROUND TOUCH and FRENCH TOUCH and TOUCH THE ROAD YOU MUST GO OVER and CROSS TOUCH and HE (called EE; all touch-games are “he” games, and this is the grandfather of the whole family), and ELBOW TOUCH and HELP TOUCH and B—TOUCH and TOUCHING BOOTLEATHER and HOP TOUCH and DOUBLE TOUCH and TOUCH LAST (or HAD YOU LAST) and TOUCHING IRON and TOUCH WOOD AND WHISTLE and NON-STOP TOUCH and STICK-TOUCH, or STICK-HE (touching with sticks) and WATER-HE (played in the baths) and STRING-HE (touch and hold hands: like WIDDY) and TREE-HE (up trees) and SHADOW-HE, which must be played in the sunshine, like this:
“The one who is he has to try and tread on one of the person’s shadders, then he is he.”