Children's rattles have from the most ancient times been an important article of nursery furniture. Hollow balls containing a loose pebble, which served this purpose, belong to the most ancient classic times. These "rattles," however, often had a more artistic form, lyre-shaped with a moving plectrum; or the name was used for little separate metallic figures—"charms," as we now say—strung together so as to jingle, and worn in a necklace. Such were afterwards preserved with great care; in the comic drama they replace the "strawberry mark" by which the father recognizes his long-lost child. Thus, in the "Rudens" of Plautus, Palæstra, who has lost in shipwreck her casket, finds a fisherman in possession of it, and claims her property. Both agree to accept Dæmones, the unknown father of the maiden, as arbiter. Dæmones demands, "Stand off, girl, and tell me, what is in the wallet?" "Playthings."[27] "Right, I see them; what do they look like?" "First, a little golden sword with letters on it." "Tell me, what are the letters?" "My father's name. Then there is a two-edged axe, also of gold, and lettered; my mother's name is on the axe.... Then a silver sickle, and two clasped hands, and a little pig, and a golden heart, which my father gave me on my birthday." "It is she; I can no longer keep myself from embracing her. Hail, my daughter!"
In the ancient North, too, children played with figures of animals. The six-year-old Arngrim is described in a saga as generously making a present of his little brass horse to his younger brother Steinolf; it was more suitable to the latter's age, he thought.
The weapons of boys still preserve the memory of those used by primitive man. The bow and arrow, the sling, the air-gun, the yet more primeval club or stone, are skilfully handled by them. Their use of the top and ball has varied but little from the Christian era to the present day. It is, therefore, not surprising that many games are nearly the same as when Pollux described them in the second century.[28] Yet it interests us to discover that not only the sports themselves, but also the words of the formulas by which they are conducted, are in certain cases older than the days of Plato and Xenophon.[29]
We have already set forth the history contained in certain appellations of the song and dance. If the very name of the chorus has survived in Europe to the present day, so the character of the classic round is perpetuated in the ring games of modern children. Only in a single instance, but that a most curious one, have the words of a Greek children's round been preserved. This is the "tortoise-game," given by Pollux, and we will let his words speak for themselves:
"The tortoise is a girl's game, like the pot; one sits, and is called tortoise. The rest go about asking:
"O torti-tortoise, in the ring what doest thou?"
She answers:
"I twine the wool, and spin the fine Milesian thread."
The first again:
"Tell us, how was it that thy offspring died?"