Peter. No money, on my faith, but the gleek.”
Douce, however, considers that the word gleek was simply used to express a stronger sort of joke, a scoffing; and that the phrase “to give the gleek” merely denoted to pass a jest upon, or to make a person appear ridiculous.
Handy-dandy. A very old game among children. A child hides something in his hand, and makes his playfellow guess in which hand it is. If the latter guess rightly, he wins the article, if wrongly, he loses an equivalent.[796] Sometimes, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, “the game is played by a sort of sleight-of-hand, changing the article rapidly from one hand into the other, so that the looker-on is often deceived, and induced to name the hand into which it is apparently thrown.” This is what Shakespeare alludes to by “change places” in “King Lear” (iv. 6): “see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”[797]
Hide-fox and all after. A children’s game, considered by many to be identical with hide-and-seek. It is mentioned by Hamlet (iv. 2). Some commentators think that the term “kid-fox,” in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3), may have been a technical term in the game of “hide-fox.” Some editions have printed it “hid-fox.” Claudio says:
“O, very well, my lord: the music ended,
We’ll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.”
Hoodman-blind. The childish sport now called blindman’s buff was known by various names, such as hood-wink, blind-hob, etc. It was termed “hoodman-blind,” because the players formerly were blinded with their hoods,[798] and under this designation it is mentioned by Hamlet (iii. 4):
“What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?”
In Scotland this game was called “belly-blind;” and Gay, in his “Shepherd’s Week” (i. 96), says, concerning it:
“As once I play’d at blindman’s buff, it hapt
About my eyes the towel thick was wrapt,
I miss’d the swains, and seiz’d on Blouzelind.
True speaks that ancient proverb, ‘Love is blind.’”
The term “hoodman” occurs in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iv. 3). The First Lord says: “Hoodman comes!” and no doubt there is an allusion to the game in the same play (iii. 6), “we will bind and hoodwink him;” and in “Macbeth” (iv. 3) Macduff says: “the time you may so hoodwink.” There may also have been a reference to falconry—the hawks being hooded in the intervals of sport. Thus, in Latham’s “Falconry” (1615), “to hood” is the term used for the blinding, “to unhood” for the unblinding.