Games and songs of American children

by Unknown

Like causes have occasioned the simultaneous disappearance of like usages in countries widely separated. In the last generation children still sang in our own towns the ancient summons to the evening sports—

Boys and girls, come out to play,
The moon it shines as bright as day;

and similarly in Provence, the girls who conducted their ring-dances in the public squares, at the stroke of ten sang:

Ten hours said,
Maids to bed.

But the usage has departed in the quiet cities of Southern France, as in the busy marts of America.

It is much, however, to have the pleasant memory of the ancient rules which youth established to direct its own amusement, and to know that our own land, new as by comparison it is, has its legitimate share in the lore of childhood, in considering which we overleap the barriers of time, and are placed in communion with the happy infancy of all ages. Let us illustrate our point, and end these prefatory remarks, with a version of the description of his own youth given by a poet of half a thousand years since—no mean singer, though famous in another field of letters—the chronicler Jean Froissart. He regards all the careless pleasures of infancy as part of the unconscious education of the heart, and the thoughtless joy of childhood as the basis of the happiness of maturity; a deep and true conception, which we have nowhere seen so exquisitely developed, and which he illuminates with a ray of that genuine genius which remains always modern in its universal appropriateness, when, recounting the sports of his own early life,[33] many of which we recognize as still familiar, he writes:

In that early childish day
I was never tired to play
Games that children every one
Love until twelve years are done;
To dam up a rivulet
With a tile, or else to let
A small saucer for a boat
Down the purling gutter float;
Over two bricks, at our will,
To erect a water-mill;
And in the end wash clean from dirt,
In the streamlet, cap and shirt.
We gave heart and eye together
To see scud a sailing feather;
After I was put to school,
Where ignorance is brought to rule,
There were girls as young as I;
These I courted, by-and-by,
Little trinkets offering—
A pear, an apple, or glass ring;
For their favor to obtain
Seemed great prowess to me then,
And, sober earnest, so it is.
And now and then it pleased us well
To sift dust through a piercèd shell
On our coats; or in time ripe,
To cut out a wheaten pipe.
In those days for dice and chess
Cared we busy children less
Than mud pies and buns to make,
And heedfully in oven bake
Of four bricks; and when came Lent,
Out was brought a complement
Of river-shells, from secret hold,
Estimated above gold,
To play away, as I thought meet,
With the children of our street;
And as they tossed a counter, I
Stood and shouted, "Pitch it high!"
When the moon was shining bright
We would play in summer night
Pince-merine; and time so passed,
I was more eager at the last
Than outset, and I thought it shame
When I was made to stop my game.
More to tell, we practised too
The sport entitled Queue loo loo,[34]
Hook, Trottot Merlot, Pebbles, Ball;
And when we had assembled all,
Pears, swiftly running; or were lief
To play at Engerrant the Thief.
Now and then, for a race-course,
Of a staff we made a horse,
And called him Gray; or, in knight's guise,
We put our caps on helmet-wise;
And many a time, beside a maid,
A mimic house of shells I made.
Upon occasions we would choose
The one who hit me I accuse,
Take Colin off; and by-and-by
Selected King who does not lie,
Ring, Prison-bars; or were content,
When in-doors, with Astonishment,
Oats, Scorn, or Riddles; nor forget
Replies, and Grasses, Cligne-musette,
Retreat, and Mule, and Hunt the Hare;
Leaping and Palm-ball had their share,
Salt Cowshorn, and Charette Michaut;
And oftentimes we chose to throw
Pebbles or pence against a stake;
Or small pits in the ground would make,
And play at nuts, which he who lost,
His pleasure bitterly was crossed.
To drive a top was my delight
From early morning until night;
Or to blow, single or double,
Through a tube a bright soap-bubble,
Or a batch of three or four,
To rejoice our eyes the more.
Games like these, and more beside,
Late and early have I plied.
Followed a season of concern;
Latin I was made to learn;
And if I missed, I was a dunce,
And must be beaten for the nonce.
So manners changed, as hands severe
Trained me to knowledge and to fear.
Yet lessons done, when I was free,
Quiet I could never be,
But fought with my own mates, and thus
Was vanquished or victorious;
And many a time it was my fate
To come home in a ragged state
And meet reproof and chastisement;
But, after all, 'twas pains misspent;
For, let a comrade come in sight,
That moment I had taken flight,
And none could hinder; in that hour
Pleasure unto me was power,
Though oft I found, as I find still,
The two inadequate to my will.
Thus I did the time employ—
So may Heaven give me joy—
That all things tended to my pleasure,
Both my labor and my leisure,
Being alert and being still;
Hours had I at my own will.
Then a wreath of violets,
To give maids for coronets,
Was to me of more account
Than the present of a count,
Twenty marks, would be to-day;
I had a heart content and gay,
And a soul more free and light
Than the verse may well recite.
So, to fashion form and feature,
Co-operated Love and Nature:
Nature made the body strong,
And forces that to Love belong,
Soft and generous the heart;
Truly, if in every part
Of the body soul did live,
I should have been sensitive!
Not a splendor upon earth
I esteemed so seeing-worth
As clustered violets, or a bed
Of peonies or roses red.
When approached the winter-time,
And out-of-doors was cold and rime,
No loss had I what to do,
But read romances old and new,
And did prefer, the rest above,
Those of which the theme was love,
Imagining, as on I went,
Everything to my content.
Thus, since infantine delight
Oft inclines the heart aright,
After his own living form
Love my spirit did inform,
And pleasure into profit turned;
For the fortitude I learned,
And the soul of high emprise,
Hath such merit in my eyes,
That its worth and preciousness
Words of mine cannot express.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Boston.