"Dab a prin in my lottery-book;
Dab ane, dab two, dab a' your prins awa',"
by sticking at random pins in their school-books, between the leaves of which little pictures are placed. This is the lottery-box, the pictures the prizes, and the pins the forfeits.
Another favourite Scotch game is—
"A' the birds of the air, and the days of the week."
Girls' pleasures are by no means so diversified as those of boys. It would be considered a trifle too effeminate were the little men to amuse themselves with their sisters' game of Chucks—an enchanting amusement, played with a large-sized marble and four octagonal pieces of chalk. Beds, another girlish game, is also played on the pavement—a piece of broken pot, china or earthenware, being kicked from one of the beds or divisions marked out on the flags to another, the girls hopping on one leg while doing so. It is a pastime better known as Hop Scotch, and is played in every village and town of the British Isles, varying slightly in detail. The rhymes used by street children to decide who is to begin the game are numerous.
The Scotch version of a well-known one is given below—
"Zickety, dickety, dock, the mouse ran up the nock,
The nock struck one, down the mouse ran,
Zickety, dickety, dock."
"Anery, twaery, tickery, seven,
Aliby, crackeby, ten or eleven;
Pin pan, muskidan,
Tweedlum, twodlum, twenty-one."
Amongst the notable men in the world's history who have depicted children's games, St. Luke the Evangelist tells in a pleasant passage of how Jesus likened the men of His day to children sitting in the market-place and calling to their playmates—
"We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced;
We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."