An interesting history of this game will be found in Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes” (1876, pp. 419-421).
Barley-break. This game, called also the “Last Couple in Hell,” which is alluded to in the “Two Noble Kinsmen,” (iv. 3), was played by six people, three of each sex, who were coupled by lot.[768] A piece of ground was then chosen, and divided into three compartments, of which the middle one was called hell. It was the object of the couple condemned to this division to catch the others, who advanced from the two extremities; in which case a change of situation took place, and hell was filled by the couple who were excluded by preoccupation from the other places. This catching, however, was not so easy, as, by the rules of the game, the middle couple were not to separate before they had succeeded, while the others might break hands whenever they found themselves hard pressed. When all had been taken in turn, the last couple were said “to be in hell,” and the game ended.
The game was frequently mentioned by old writers, and appears to have been very popular. From Herrick’s Poems, it is seen that the couples in their confinement occasionally solaced themselves by kisses:
“Barley-break; or, Last in Hell.
“We two are last in hell; what may we fear,
To be tormented, or kept pris’ners here?
Alas, if kissing be of plagues the worst,
We’ll wish in hell we had been last and first.”
In Scotland it was called barla-breikis, and was, says Jamieson, “generally played by young people in a corn-yard, hence its name, barla-bracks, about the stacks.”[769] The term “hell,” says Nares,[770] “was indiscreet, and must have produced many profane allusions, besides familiarizing what ought always to preserve its due effect of awe upon the mind.” Both its names are alluded to in the following passage in Shirley’s “Bird in a Cage:”
“Shall’s to barlibreak?
I was in hell last; ’tis little less to be in a petticoat sometimes.”
Base. This was a rustic game, known also as “Prison base” or “Prison bars.” It is mentioned in “Cymbeline” (v. 3) by Posthumus:
“Lads more like to run
The country base, than to commit such slaughter.”
And in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (i. 2) by Lucetta: