Many of these sports are played with cigarette-cards or with ordinary playing cards, or with either; and I might tell you the names of some of those of the first kind, seeing that the lads have to play their card-games out of doors, hereabouts, if—if it weren’t for the gambling they lead to. For instance, there’s KNOCKING DOLLY OUT O’ BED where you lay down three for a king, two for a jack, one for a queen and none for an ace, and—well, there you are! You must just come and ask some of the boys higher up the street; maybe they’ve heard of the game[C]. Ours are respectable. Gambling is forbidden by law, and they know it. That’s why you have to be so darned careful not to get copped.
Or you can play with tins, or bits of metal and wood, or with nuts. In THROWING THE NICKER (or TIN ON THE LINE) you really ought to use a piece of lead or tin, or an old key, but sometimes you haven’t got one, and then you must put up with a slate; and the same with NIXIE and PITCH OUT and PITCHING ON THE HAT and PITCHING IN THE HAT and BULLS EYE and ONE, TWO, THREE and OVER THE LINE. There are many tin-can games, such as TIN-CAN BUMP and TIN-CAN JUMP and TIN-CAN CATCH and TIN-CAN FISHING and TIN-CAN FETCH IT and TIN-CAN RACING and TIN-CAN GO IT and TIN-CAN TOUCH and TIN-CAN HIDE IT and TIN-CAN HAVE IT and COCK-SHY and CATCH THE RIDER and PITCHING UP THE WALL. The best of all of them is TIN-CAN COPPER (or KICK-CAN POLICEMAN) which goes like this:—
“You get a tin and place it on the road. You then toss up who is to be tin-can copper. After the one is found you throw it up the street & then go and hide. The one who has to go after the can must not turn round and must come back backwards. When he has got back he puts the tin down & then looks to see if he can see you—if he see you he points were you are and shout your name & Bangs the can down three times, if he does not see you you can creep up and steal the can & fling it up the road again and all of them can hide. The last one caught is the Tin-can-Copper”.
There are different ways of playing TIPPIT and I can’t stop to explain them; one is played with sticks, and one without, and another with tin; and you can play tippit with a top and a coin; in fact, it’s one of those names, like “fire-engines” or “pitching up the line”, that don’t mean anything in particular and are used for all kinds of sports. With sticks you can also play CUNJER, and CATCHING THE FALLING WAND (a ring-game for children) and SEIZING STICKS (or SCOTCH AND ENGLISH):—
“One of A.’s side tries to rush and get a stick from B.’s side without being caught. If he is caught he remains a prisoner, unless touched by one of his own side again. But no sticks can be taken by any one while there are prisoners. The game is won by the side who get all the sticks”—
and WAND BALANCE RACE and different kinds of TIBBY-CAT (or NIBBY-CAP) such as SETS and RUNS and WOGGLES and CATCHERS and SINGLES. You can’t play TIBBY-CAT if there are any blue boys hanging around; they’re down on the game, because people sometimes get their windows smashed or their eyes bunged up.
Hitting the mummy is played with nuts—
“You throw nuts against a wall and let them lay there till one of them is hit, then he who hits has the lot. But if he doesn’t leave Mummy laying down he has to pay six.”
With nuts (or cherry-stones or date-stones) you can also play YOU HAVE ALL YOU GET and KNOCK HIM DOWN HAVE HIM and TIP-TAP and MOP CHERRY-STONES and UP THE GUTTER-SPOUT; as well as another game for which you need nuts and an old tobacco-tin. I can’t tell you its name, because I don’t know it; and the lads can’t tell you either, because it hasn’t got one—not yet. It’s quite a new game.
But some of the best sports are those which they make up without anything at all, just out of their heads, like STAGS, and FOX-HUNTING, and SHOEING THE WILD HORSE (you need confederates for this, and a fresh boy; but it’s quite a respectable game), and TOMMY ALL ROUND, and BLIND DONKEY, and SAILOR, and HORSE-SOLDIERS. Horse-soldiers (also called FLYING ANGELS) is rather rough, and so is COCK AND HEN FIGHT. Or hide-and-seek games like I spy—spit in your eye, which goes like this:—