A number of children seat themselves in a circle on the ground, as near to each other as possible, and one of the party is chosen to stand in the centre of the ring. Those who are seated keep their hands in their laps with their fists closed, and endeavour to pass a pebble or other small object from one to the other, without its being perceived by the child who is in the middle. While the game is going on they recite the following rhyme:—
“Mon toussebelet va demandant,
Ma fausse vieille va quérant,
Sur lequel prends tu, bon enfant?”[233]
The child in the centre of the circle is in the meantime on the look out to discover into whose hands the pebble is passing, and, if he can succeed in arresting it in the possession of any one of the players, he takes his place in the ring, and the one in whose hands the pebble was caught, replaces him in the centre.
From Rachel du Port.
[233] Editor’s Note.—All Guernsey nursery rhymes, etc., are naturally either in old French or Guernsey French, dating as they do from the times when no other language was spoken in the island.