To which she says:
"He plunged in ocean from the backs of horses white."
Our author does not tell us how the game ended; but from his comparison to the "pot-game"[30] we conclude that the tortoise immediately dives into the "ocean" (the ring) to catch whom she can.
This quaint description shows us that the game-formulas of ancient times were to the full as incoherent and obscure as those of our day frequently are. The alliterative name of the tortoise,[31] too, reminding us of the repetitions of modern nursery tales, speaks volumes for the character of Greek childish song.
Kissing games, also, were as familiar in the classic period as in later time; for Pollux quotes the Athenian comic poet Crates as saying of a coquette that she "plays kissing games in rings of boys, preferring the handsome ones."
It must be confessed, however, that we can offer nothing so graceful as the cry with which Greek girls challenged each other to the race, an exclamation which we may render, "Now, fairies!"[32]—the maidens assuming for the nonce the character of the light-footed nymphs of forest or stream.
Coming down to mediæval time, we find that the poets constantly refer to the life of children, with which they have the deepest sympathy, and which they invest with a bright poetry, putting later writers to shame by comparison. That early period, in its frank enjoyment of life, was not far from the spirit of childhood. Wolfram of Eschenbach represents a little girl as praising her favorite doll:
None is so fair
As my daughter there.
The German proverb still is "Happy as a doll."
It has been remarked how, in all times, the different sex and destiny of boys and girls are unconsciously expressed in the choice and conduct of their pleasures. "Women," says a writer of the seventeenth century, "have an especial fondness for children. That is seen in little girls, who, though they know not so much as that they are maids, yet in their childish games carry about dolls made of rags, rock them, cradle them, and care for them; while boys build houses, ride on a hobby-horse, busy themselves with making swords and erecting altars."