Chapter III: Part 3

and LAST ACROSS and STEPS ACROSS and PEEP (also called JACK) and HOME FOUR and I SPY EGGS AND BACON (hide-and-seek) and SAVOY (also called SAVELOY) and WATERMAN and LEADING THE BLIND HORSE TO THE KNACKER and FAIRY CHASE and HOPPING JINNY and SKITTLES KNOCK ’EM DOWN and GUESSING WORDS (at shop-windows) and NICKO MIDNIGHT (“Flash your light”) and PIG IN THE POT--

“One person stands in the middle all the rest stand at one end the whole lot have to run to the other side. If you start you must keep on. If one or two are caught you have to join hands and go after the others.”

and FIGHT FOR THE FLAG (two parties: played from a mound) and LEARN YOUR A. B. C. and SERVING YOUR COUNTRY A GOOD GAME and LIG-A-LOG and FRENCH BLIND MAN’S BUFF and ANIMAL BLIND MAN’S BUFF--

“A ring is drawn, in which is a blind man, and the players; the players move about until the blind man strikes on the ground with his wand. He then touches any one (all are standing still) and asks them to imitate an animal’s voice. He then tries to recognise them by their voice. If he succeeds the other is the blind man, if not, the game is continued”--

and WILL YOU SURRENDER and TELLING YOUR DREAM and FIVE TEN FIFTEEN TWENTY (catch-game) and JACK AROUND (catch) and SEE YOU ACROSS and LONG RUN and RACE TO BERLIN (new) and BOGIE MAN (catch) and NO MAN STANDING and WALL TO WALL and SAINT GEORGE AND HIS MERRY MEN and DELIVER YOUR LUGGAGE and FISH AWAY JACK (four lamp-posts and eight boys) and PIN, BUTTON OR MARBLE--

In this, you go up to a boy smaller than yourself and take him by the throat and say “Pin, button, or marble”. And that’s all you have to do. Because then he must turn out his pockets and give you whatever he can find, and thank God if he doesn’t get a thrashing into the bargain. It isn’t exactly what you’ld call even chances, but it’s quite all right, especially if you happen to be the big boy; because the big boy generally wins at this game. Now you may wonder why they collect pins. Well, our boys will collect anything, anyhow, anywhere--even if it’s useless; but precious few things, you know, are really useless (I can’t think of a single one, just now), and as to pins--I’m not even going to try to tell you in how many ways you need them. Some boys go about with a provision of hundreds of pins stuck in their clothes for different sports; mothers are also very fond of pins, and if you give them a nice handful on a Saturday morning, they’ll think you’ve been quietly thinking about them all the week and collecting pins for them; and maybe that’ll mean an extra something for the picture-show later on. They collect buttons the same way, for games like BUTTONS IN THE RING; only the buttons must be of metal, of brass or steel; they must ring like money when you throw them on the pavement: that’s the test. All other buttons are simply “toot”--not worth talking about. The best metal buttons are commissionaires’ buttons; they’re called “raileys”, and a good railey is worth four or even six ordinary metal ones, while a bad one (with a loose shank, for instance) will fetch only two. Many boys are able to stitch themselves full of these buttons, for use in games; the less clever ones, those who keep on losing them, have to cut the buttons from their own clothes and go about from one year’s end to another with their trowsers hitched to their braces by means of their sisters’ hair-pins, bent double. But that’s neither here nor there--

and SINGLE SAY-GO and DOUBLE SAY-GO and QUEEN, KING OR DIRTY RASCAL and MOSCOW and RUGBY SCRUM (introduced by the scouts) and I WILL APPRENTICE MY SON TO A CARPENTER and SAILOR BOY and STORKY and EGGS and THREE IN THREE OUT (the last four are hide-and-seek games) and CROWNINGS (also hide-and-seek) and MOUSE IN THE COPPER and SHOW THREE FACES: GO and MAGIC WRITING and DRAG-LAG (played with sacks) and PICKLE CABBAGE (name-calling) and PUTTING (_not_ pulling) THE KAISER’S WHISKERS (new) and BLUE BOY and BACK YOU and KING CAESAR and TING TING THE SPIDER (you need an outside window for this) and PUSS IN THE CORNER and HOP AND CHARGE and TAKING THE CASTLE and DARTS (also called NIBS) and PENNY THREE HALFPENCE TWOPENCE (running) and TWO IN TWO OUT and TUG OF WAR and CHIVY CHASE and DADDY RED-CAP (or GREEN-CAP)--and that’s enough for today.

DADDY RED-CAP has a song beginning like this:

“Plaster of Paris has lost his hat--
Some say this, and some say that....”

and that’s interesting, because “Plaster of Paris”, of course, is all nonsense. And so is “Plaistow Palace”, as they sometimes call it. The real song goes:--

“Beadle Palace has lost his hat--
Some say this, and some say that....”

but the boys twist the words about, because they disremember who Beadle Palace was; and I can’t tell you either. Mr. Perkins, of Framlingham Brothers (Limited), once told me he knew all about it; he said that “Beadle Palace” stands for the Bishop of London, who _really did_ lose his hat one evening; and “some say” it was blown off his head by the wind, and “some say” he gave it to a woman with red hair and a squint, and never got it back again. But he was a bit on, that night, was Mr. Perkins. Or else the Bishop must have been....

These are about a thousand of the outdoor games they play down our way--not a bad number, when you think that our children can only play after they come home from school or work, and that they hardly ever play on Sundays on account of their clothes, or in winter because the evenings are too dark, and that the rain often keeps them indoors anyhow, and that the lads over 14 don’t play at all. And yet, no doubt, I must have forgotten to tell you half of them; and I shall never stop forgetting, if I don’t stop trying to remember....

Now what I think is this. It doesn’t matter how all these sports are played. What matters is that they _are_ played. To show how wide-awake our youngsters are, to be able to go on inventing games out of their heads all the time--that’s the point: my point, at least. The particular rules of all these different games--they don’t strike me as very important, or even interesting.

And you’ll agree with me that it’s as clear as daylight, and it all comes to this: if you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things. Because of course they only invent games when they have none ready-made for them, like richer folks have--when, in other words, they’ve nothing in their hands. As Mr. Perkins said: “You can’t play a ball-game, if you haven’t got a ball”, meaning that if you want to play, and have nothing to play with, you must play at something that doesn’t need anything. Give them bats and balls, and they soon forget their CHINESE ORDERS, and there’s an end of SHOWING NO IVORY, and nobody thinks of PULLING OUT FATHER’S RHUBARB, and OLD DEVIL may go to--well, where he came from. That’s what keeps them alive and “imaginative” (as Aunt Eliza would say)--having nothing to play with. That’s what makes them use up all they can find--clay and kerbstones and nuts and winkle-shells and clothes and empty condensed-milk tins and walls and caps and stones and window-sills and buttons and doorsteps and lamp-posts and rags and anything else that comes handy. And that’s how they come to play any number of games and to discover new ones every day, while better-class lads get into grooves and go on with their frowsy old cricket and one or two more all the time, always the same, year after year.

Not that I’m saying anything against CRICKET in particular. You can do many things with a bat. But there are many more things you can’t do. And all these other things are bound to be left outside your reach in the long run, if you get taken up by cricket. Because, you see, you don’t take up cricket--you think you do, but you don’t; you get taken up. You think you are going to do what you please with a bat, but the fact is, the bat does what it pleases with you; you think it’s your servant, but in reality it’s a master who drives you along the way he means to go--or rather, the only way he can go (that is, hitting a ball). It’s perfectly true that you can play well or badly; but, play as you like, you can’t help your faculty for inventing something outside bats and balls getting rustier all the time. And it’s true that cricket saves you the trouble of inventing those other games; that’s just its drawback, I say. No getting out of the rut! With the bat in your hand, you can only do what it allows you to do. Which is a good deal; but not half as much as if your hand were empty.

And what Mr. P. said of ball-games applies to all the others that are played with _things_. Say you want to have a go at WRIGGLY-WORM. Right! But you can’t mark out a pattern in chalk if you have no chalk to do it with. That’s clear. And you haven’t always got a lump of chalk in your pocket; now, have you? And then you feel about and turn them inside out and find you have not only no chalk but nothing else--absolutely nothing at all; not a top or a marble, no, not even a konker or a nicker or a bus-ticket. And then?

Why, then, if you can’t invent something different, something jolly well altogether out of your head, where are you? Because, of course, you’ve got to play something or other--unless you want to be a soppy fathead. And our youngsters don’t want to be soppy fatheads. What’s more, they aren’t. They try a good many things, and often they succeed; but they couldn’t be _that_, even if they tried; which they don’t.

POSTSCRIPT. Aunt Eliza writes to say that she can’t explain what the boys mean when they say “Obobé”, but she feels sure it must be “something not quite nice”. Thank God, there’s one thing she can’t explain. For my part, I think these words like Obobé and A-lairy and Widdy are the queerest thing of all, about these sports. And what’s queerer still are the names like Salmon Fishing and Cold Pies and Blue Boy, that make sense but have nothing whatever to do with the games.

She also tells me that the song of _London Bridge is broken down_ goes back to “bloodthirsty rites of foundation-sacrifice” (read it in some book, I daresay, and so thinks it must be true), and that _Fie Sally, Cry Sally_ “originated in early water-worship”. Early water-worship be blowed. Late beer-worship is more my style. But Aunt Eliza knows too much, anyhow; so much, that I shall have to ask her about the originating of the game of DUCKING MUMMY, and whether it makes her think of a certain good old custom. Then she says that _Here we come gathering nuts in May_ is “a relic of Marriage by Capture”, and some more stuff of that kind. No doubt; no doubt. Aunt Eliza thinks a good deal about Marriage by Capture--to judge by her talk, at least. Nobody ever tried to capture _her_, you know. And nobody ever will, I don’t think.

ARDEN PRESS]

W. H. SMITH & SON,
STAMFORD STREET, E.C.

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Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation has been standardized. Spelling has been retained as in the original except for the following:

Page 69: “Hush-A-larly, hush-a-larly” “Hush-a-larly, hush-a-larly” Page 93: “did it cost here?” “did it cost her?”