If no one acknowledges to holding Jacks or better, the pot is fattened, and the cards are reshuffled and dealt. The best practice is for the same dealer to deal again until some one gets Jacks or better. This is called _=dealing off the jack=_. If any player has forfeited his right in one deal, such as by having a foul hand, that does not prevent him coming into the pot again on the next deal with rights equal to the other players. If any player holds Jacks or better, he can open the pot, or “the jack,” for any amount he pleases within the betting limit. The expression “open” is used because after one player has declared that he holds Jacks or better, all restrictions are removed, and the pool is then open to any player to come in and play for it, regardless of what he may hold. Each player in turn, beginning on the left of the opener, must declare whether or not he will _=stay=_. If he stays, he must put up an amount equal to that bet by the opener, and has the privilege of raising him if he sees fit. If he passes, he throws his cards face downward on the table in front of the player whose turn it will be to deal next. Should the opener be raised, and not care to see that raise, he must show his hand to the table before abandoning it, in order to demonstrate that he had openers.
As soon as the board is filled, each man counts up his colour, and the one that has the majority wins the game. HALMA. This is played on a board with 256 squares, each player having nineteen men of distinguishing colours. At the start the men are placed in an enclosure at the corner of the board, called a “yard.” The object of the player is to get his men out of his own yard and into his adversary’s. The men move one square at a time, like a king at chess, unless a man gets to the square adjoining that occupied by another man with a space beyond it. Whether the adjoining man is his own or his adversary’s, the player can hop over it into the vacant space beyond, and he can make as many hops as there are men and spaces. This being so, a player will try to make “ladders” with his own men, placing them in a line diagonally, with a space between each, and will then hop his men over them all. As soon as he gets all his men into his adversary’s yard the game is ended. Special directions always come with the apparatus.
Garland dressing is very general; cakes were eaten at Rorrington well, Shropshire (Burne s _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 433); pins and portions of the dress are very general offerings; silence is strictly enforced in many instances, and a sacred tree or bush is very frequently found near the well. The tune of the Hampshire game (Miss Mendham s version) is practically the same as that of the Mulberry Bush. Newell (_Games of American Children_, p. 90) gives a version of this game. Drawing Dun out of the Mire Brand, quoting from an old collection of satires, epigrams, &c., says this game is enumerated among other pastimes: At shove-groat, venter-point, or crosse and pile, At leaping o er a Midsummer bone-fier, Or at _the drawing Dun out of the myer_. So in the _Dutchesse of Suffolke_, 1631: Well done, my masters, lends your hands, _Draw Dun out of the ditch_, Draw, pull, helpe all, so, so, well done. [_They pull him out._] They had shoved Bishop Bonner into a well, and were pulling him out.