Nine, a favourite and mysterious number everywhere, prevails in games. Strutt (_Sports_, p. 384) also describes the game as played in two ways--a game with bowling marbles at a wooden bridge; and another game, also with marbles, in which four, five, or six holes, and sometimes more, are made in the ground at a distance from each other, and the business of every one of the players is to bowl a marble, by a regular succession, into all the holes, and he who completes in the fewest bowls obtains the victory. In Northamptonshire a game called Nine Holes, or Trunks, is played with a long piece of wood or bridge with nine arches cut in it, each arch being marked with a figure over it, from one to nine, in the following rotation--VII., V., III., I., IX., II., IIII.
The following from Halliwell s _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 298, is also used for ball divination. To cook is to toss or throw. Cook a ball, cherry tree; Good ball, tell me How many years I shall be Before my true love I do see? One and two, and that makes three; Thankee, good ball, for telling of me. See Ball, Cuckoo, Monday. Kibel and Nerspel This game was played at Stixwold seventy years ago. It resembled Trap, Bat, and Ball. _Kibel_ = bat, _ner_ = ball of maplewood, _spel_ = trap, with a limock (pliant) stick fastened to it. The score was made by hitting the _ner_ a certain distance, but not by the striker running, as in Rounders. --Miss M.
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