=_ She’s fooling thee. Jack. Disagreeable young man. _=R.=_ He will do you an injury or injustice of some kind. Ten. Prison. Nine. Vexatious delays in business matters. Eight.
Addy. At Cork a handkerchief is tied over the eyes of one of the company, who then lays his head on a chair, and places his hand on his back with the palm uppermost. Any of the party come behind him and give him a slap on his hand, he in the meantime trying to discover whose hand it is that strikes.--Miss Keane. Hot Cockles is an old game, practised especially at Christmas. One boy sits down, and another, who is blindfolded, kneels and lays his head on his knee, placing at the same time his open hand on his own back. He then cries, Hot cockles, hot! Another then strikes his open hand, and the sitting boy asks who strikes. If the boy guessed wrongly, he made a forfeit; but if rightly, he was released.--_Notes and Queries_, 4th series, ix. 262.
Now, my daughter, married to-day, Like father and mother they should be, To love one another like sister and brother-- I pray you now to kiss one another. Now my daughter Mary s gone, With her pockets all lined with gold; On my finger a gay gold ring-- Good-bye, Mary, good-bye. Now this poor widow is left alone, Nobody could marry a better one; Choose one, choose two-- Choose the fairest daughter. --Sheffield (S. O. Addy). XVI. Round the green gravel the grass is so green, And all the fine ladies that ever were seen; Washed in milk and dressed in silk, The last that stoops down shall be married. [Johnnie Smith] is a nice young man, And so is [Bessie Jones] as nice as he; He came to the door with his hat in his hand, Inquiring for [Miss Jones]. She is neither within, she is neither without, She is up in the garret a-walking about.
FIVE-CARD LOO. This is Irish Loo with some additional variations. Each red counter should be worth five white ones, and the players will require about fifty red counters each at starting. The dealer puts up five red counters. Any player holding a flush of five cards in any suit may immediately claim the pool, and every person at the table, whether playing or not, is supposed to be looed, and pays five red counters to the next pool. If two players hold flushes, the elder hand wins, even if the younger hand holds a flush in trumps. Another variation is to make the club Jack, which is known as _=Pam=_, always the best trump. Combined with four cards of any suit, this card will make a flush. If any player leads the trump ace, the holder of Pam must pass the trick if he can do so without revoking. The old usage was for the holder of the trump ace to notify any player holding Pam to pass, if he wished him to do so; but that is quite superfluous, as no player wants to lose his ace of trumps, and it goes without saying that he wants Pam to pass it.
=_ The cards are spread and drawn for choice of seats and first deal. The lowest cut has first choice, the next lowest sitting on his left and so on round the table. _=DEALING.=_ When two play, ten cards are given to each. When three play, seven to each. When four play, six to each. The cards are dealt one at a time until all are helped and the next card is turned face up on the table as a starter for the discard pile. The stock is left beside this card, face down. _=OBJECT OF THE GAME.=_ The aim of the players is to get rid of the cards dealt them and those they draw from the stock by laying face upward on the table any combinations of three of a kind, or three in sequence and suit.
Five cards are dealt to each player, by two and three at a time, and the three remaining form the widow. The player bidding _=three=_ tricks takes one partner only. The player bidding _=four=_ or _=five=_ tricks, takes two partners. A player who intends to take the widow, but no partners, can bid _=eight=_ and one who intends to take neither widow nor partners can bid _=fifteen=_. In this form of Euchre the scores are generally known, and 100 points is game. In some clubs it is the practice for the successful bidder to select one of his partners by asking for the holder of a certain card. For instance: B has the lead, and has bid five in hearts, holding the three best trumps, the club ace, and a losing spade. Instead of selecting his partners at random, he asks for the spade ace, and the player holding that card must say, “Here”; upon which the bidder will pass him a counter, marking him as one of his partners. CALL-ACE EUCHRE. In this variety of euchre, each player is for himself so far as the final score goes.
Houses and sheds must be made of solid lumps of bricks, and not hollow so that soldiers can be put inside them, because otherwise muddled situations arise. And it was clearly necessary to provide for the replacement of disturbed objects by chalking out the outlines of boards and houses upon the floor or boards upon which they stood. And while we thus perfected the Country, we were also eliminating all sorts of tediums, disputable possibilities, and deadlocks from the game. We decided that every man should be as brave and skilful as every other man, and that when two men of opposite sides came into contact they would inevitably kill each other. This restored strategy to its predominance over chance. We then began to humanise that wild and fearful fowl, the gun. We decided that a gun could not be fired if there were not six--afterwards we reduced the number to four--men within six inches of it. And we ruled that a gun could not both fire and move in the same general move: it could either be fired or moved (or left alone). If there were less than six men within six inches of a gun, then we tried letting it fire as many shots as there were men, and we permitted a single man to move a gun, and move with it as far as he could go by the rules--a foot, that is, if he was an infantry-man, and two feet if he was a cavalry-man. We abolished altogether that magical freedom of an unassisted gun to move two feet.