This game is for girls only. All present sit in a circle, then each girl gathers her skirts tightly, so as to enclose her feet. The leader begins some rhyme; all join in, and at a word previously agreed on, keeping the skirt tightly grasped, throw themselves over backward. The object now is to recover the former position without letting go the skirt.
New York.
No. 71.
Pease Porridge Hot.
This familiar little rhyme is accompanied by two players with alternate striking of the hands together and against the knees, in a way easier to practise than to describe. School-girls often use it to warm their hands on cold winter mornings.
Pease porridge hot,
Pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.
No. 72.
Rhymes for a Race.
Up the street, down the street,
Here's the way we go.
Forty horses standing in a row;
[Dolly] on the white one,
[Harry] on the black one,
Riding to Harrisburg five miles away.
Philadelphia.
We suppose the above formula to be a rhyme for starting in a race. The common schoolboy verse—