[_Or, at Market Drayton._ Shift your feet with nimble light, And you ll be there by candle-light.] Open the gates as wide as the sky, And let King George and his lady go by. --Market Drayton, Ellesmere, Whitchurch, (Burne s _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 522). XVI. How many miles to Bethlehem? Three score and ten. Shall we get there by candle-light? Yes, there and back again. So open the gates and let King George and his family go through. --Hayton, near York (H.
=_ Écarté is played by two persons, who sit opposite each other. One is known as the dealer, and the other as the pone, the adversary, the elder hand, the non-dealer, the leader, or the player. _=THE GALLERY.=_ In clubs that make a feature of Écarté, and in which there is a great deal of betting on the outside by the spectators, it is not usual to allow more than one game between the same players, the loser giving place to one of those who have been backing him, and who is called a _=rentrant=_. This is known as playing the _cul-levé_. Any person in the gallery is allowed to draw attention to errors in the score, and may advise the player he is backing, or even play out the game for him, if he resigns. The player need not take the advice given him, which must be offered without discussion, and by pointing only, not naming the suit or cards. If a player will not allow the gallery to back him, taking all bets himself, no one may overlook his hand nor advise him without his permission, and he need not retire if he loses the game. _=CUTTING.=_ The player cutting the highest écarté card deals the first hand, and has the choice of seats and cards.
_=33.=_ _=PLAYING ALONE.=_ No one but the individual maker of the trump can play alone. _=34.=_ The dealer must announce his intention to play alone by passing his discard over to his partner. Any other player intending to play alone must use the expression “alone” in connection with his ordering up or making the trump; as, “I order it, alone;” or “I make it hearts, alone.” _=35.=_ The partner of a player who has announced to play alone must lay his cards on the table, face down. Should he expose any of his cards, the adversaries may prevent the lone hand, and compel him to play with his partner, the exposed card being left on the table and liable to be called. _=36.
[Illustration: Showing a country prepared for the war game] [Illustration: Showing countries prepared for the war game] The present writer had been lunching with a friend--let me veil his identity under the initials J. K. J.--in a room littered with the irrepressible debris of a small boy s pleasures. On a table near our own stood four or five soldiers and one of these guns. Mr J. K. J., his more urgent needs satisfied and the coffee imminent, drew a chair to this little table, sat down, examined the gun discreetly, loaded it warily, aimed, and hit his man. Thereupon he boasted of the deed, and issued challenges that were accepted with avidity.
Well, he should have. There aren t so many Thirty-thirds hanging around. And you are young, smug and snotty enough to play the part, he concluded without heat. Still, that s all it might be, just play-acting, with Barney going through the motions of being blind. You could be outside the Lodge, sonny. Any cross-roader who can tip dice the way you were working them can twitch an ear. Let s see some credentials. He scuffed through the sawdust to the bar and took a stack of silver dollars from his apron. He held them, dealerwise, in the palm of his hand, with his fingertips down, so that they were a column surrounded by a fence of fingers. How many? he asked.
VI. In the odds of check-mating on a particular square it must be the square occupied by the King mated, not by the man giving the mate. VII. The player who undertakes to win in a particular manner, and either draws the game, or wins in some other manner, must be adjudged to be the loser. In all other respects, the play in games at odds must be governed by the regulations before laid down. RULES FOR PLAYING CORRESPONDENCE AND CONSULTATION GAMES. I. In playing a game by correspondence or in consultation, the two parties shall always agree beforehand in writing or otherwise as to the persons who are to take part in the contest, as to the time and mode of transmitting the moves, as to the penalties to be inflicted for any breach of the contract, and as to the umpire or referee. II. In games of this description each party is bound by the move dispatched; and in this connection the word move refers to what is intelligibly written, or delivered _viva voce_.
As he waited for the pin-set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully. Meow. That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife. What did she think he was--a fool, a loafer, a uniformed nonentity? Didn t she know that for every half hour of pinlighting, he got a minimum of two months recuperation in the hospital? By now the set was warm. He felt the squares of space around him, sensed himself at the middle of an immense grid, a cubic grid, full of nothing. Out in that nothingness, he could sense the hollow aching horror of space itself and could feel the terrible anxiety which his mind encountered whenever it met the faintest trace of inert dust. As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him. Our own solar system was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with familiar ticking and with reassuring noises.
That the player sent to fetch the selected girl is expected to conquer seems to be implied--first, by a choice of a certain player being made to effect the capture; secondly, by the one sent to fetch being always successful; and thirdly, the crowning in the Symondsbury game. Through all the games I have seen played this idea seems to run, and it exactly accords with the conception of marriage by capture. For examples of the actual survivals in English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish customs of marriage by capture see Gomme s _Folk-lore Relics of Early Village Life_, pp. 204-210. The question is, How does this theory of the origin of the game fit in with the term Nuts in May ? I attribute this to the gathering by parties of young men of bunches of May at the May festivals and dances, to decorate not only the Maypole, May kissing-bush, but the doors of houses. Knots of May is a term used by children, meaning bunches of May. Thus, a note by Miss Fowler in the MS. of the games she had collected says, In Bucks the children speak of knots of May, meaning each little bunch of hawthorn blossom. The gathering of bunches of May by parties of young men and maidens to make the May-bush round which the May Day games were held, and dancing and courting, is mentioned by Wilde (_Irish Popular Superstitions_, p. 52), the game being Dance in the Ring.
| Halliwell. | +----+----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ | 1.| -- | -- | -- | | 2.|Here we come up the |Here we go up the |Trip, trap, over the | | |green grass. |green grass. |grass. | | 3.| -- | -- | -- | | 4.|On a dusty, dusty day.| -- | -- | | 5.
These he deals one at a time, turning up the last for the trump. When two packs are used, the player sitting opposite the dealer shuffles the still pack while the other is dealt. The deal passes in regular rotation to the left. When three play with a pack of forty cards, the last card is turned up for trumps, but it does not belong to the dealer, and is not used in play. The general rules with regard to irregularities in the deal are the same as at Whist; except that a misdeal does not pass the deal. The misdealer must deal again, and with the same pack. The cards dealt, each player sorts and counts his hand to see that he has the correct number of cards, thirteen. If not, he should immediately claim a misdeal; for a player having more or less than his right proportion of cards cannot win anything on that hand, but will have to stand his proportion of all losses incurred by him or his side. _=OBJECTS OF THE GAME.=_ There are seven distinct objects in the Solo Whist, and before play begins each player has an opportunity of declaring to which of these objects he proposes to attain.
NAIRN-- Nairn Rev. W. Gregor. IRELAND. Folk-lore Society Publications. _Notes and Queries._ ANTRIM AND DOWN Patterson s _Glossary_. CLARE-- Kilkee { G. H. Kinahan (_Folk-lore Journal_, { vol.
vii. On page 62, last line, _insert_ vol. xix. _after_ _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ On page 66, line 4, _delete_ Move All. On page 224, fig. 3 of Hopscotch should be reversed. On page 332, diagram of London omitted.
These lines are still retained in the modern nursery-rhyme books, but their connection with the game of Cockeldy-bread is by no means generally understood. There was formerly some kind of bread called cockle-bread, and _cocille-mele_ is mentioned in a very early MS. quoted in Halliwell s _Dictionary_. In Peele s play of the _Old Wives Tale_, a voice thus speaks from the bottom of a well:-- Gently dip, but not too deep, For fear you make the golden beard to weep. Fair maiden, white and red, Stroke me smooth and comb my head, And thou shalt have some _cockell-bread_. Cockly-jock A game among boys. Stones are loosely placed one upon another, at which other stones are thrown to knock the pile down.--Dickinson s _Cumberland Glossary_. See Castles. Cock s-headling A game where boys mount over each other s heads.
If the seller accepts, he scores to within one of game; but if he refuses, he must make as many as bid, even if he does not actually want them. It is one of the fine points of the game for the seller to refuse when the number of points offered would put the bidder out if he was successful. There is no penalty for bidding out of turn. If a player chooses to expose to a preceding player what he is prepared to bid, that is usually to his own disadvantage. _=Bidding to the Board.=_ Modern players usually adopt the practice of bidding to the board, eldest hand having the first bid. In this form of the game the points bid count to no one, and anyone can bid up to four, no matter what the scores are. No one can claim the privilege of pitching the trump for as many as bid, as each in turn must bid higher or pass. _=Playing.=_ The successful bidder has the first lead, and whatever card he plays, whether by mistake or not, is the trump suit for that deal.
If the seller has only two to go, and a player is able to bid three or four, he loses nothing by bidding one only, for no one can overbid him, and he is entitled to count all he makes. The only risk he runs is that the seller can afford to refuse one, and will go out on his own pitch. To remedy this it is the custom in some clubs to allow a player to bid the full value of his hand. If the seller accepts, he scores to within one of game; but if he refuses, he must make as many as bid, even if he does not actually want them. It is one of the fine points of the game for the seller to refuse when the number of points offered would put the bidder out if he was successful. There is no penalty for bidding out of turn. If a player chooses to expose to a preceding player what he is prepared to bid, that is usually to his own disadvantage. _=Bidding to the Board.=_ Modern players usually adopt the practice of bidding to the board, eldest hand having the first bid. In this form of the game the points bid count to no one, and anyone can bid up to four, no matter what the scores are.