Up in the air.
How shall I get it?
Stand on a broken chair.
Supposing I fall?
Serve you right,
For getting drunk on a Saturday night
(the mother runs after the children and the first one caught takes her place)—
and TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR (ring-game) and MATCH and RING-A-RING O’ ROSES and CHERRY-OGS (or CHERRY-BOBS) and CHERRY-PIES.
That reminds me that the last two must not be mixed up with CHERRY-BOB ARCH, a gambling game for bigger lads, quite simple but rather risky, played with cherry-stones and the lid of an old wooden box in which spaces and numbers have been marked out. You throw and—well, you must ask some of the boys higher up the street....
Now small children don’t invent games (it’s the older ones who do that) and so they carry on a good few which used to be played long ago and which the others don’t care for any more. That accounts for the queer sports you see among the kids. One of them is KING OF THE BARBARY, where one party captures a “castle” made of the other children holding their hands together. Another is GREEN MAN RISE-O, a very old game; it goes like this:—