“ It seems a thousand pities that the ancient tree should not continue to blossom; that whatever may have been acrid or tasteless in the fruit cannot be corrected by the ingrafting of a later time. There is something so agreeable in the idea of an inheritance of thought kept up by childhood itself, created for and adapted to its own needs, that it is hard to consent to part with it. ”

“ I remember to have seen in Provence some of these dances, of which the theme seems to be very ancient—one, among the rest, imitating successively the habitual actions of a poor laborer, working in his field, sowing his wheat or oats, mowing, and so on to the end. Each of the numerous couplets of the song was sung with a slow and dragging motion, as if to imitate the fatigue and the sullen air of the poor laborer; and the refrain was of a very lively movement, the dancers then giving way to all their gayety. ”

“ A majority of the games of children are played with rhymed formulas, which have been handed down from generation to generation. These we have collected in part from the children themselves, in greater part from persons of mature age who remember the usages of their youth; for this collection represents an expiring custom. The vine of oral tradition, of popular poetry, which for a thousand years has twined and bloomed on English soil, in other days enriching with color and fragrance equally the castle and the cottage, is perishing at the roots ”

“ The second and third of the party carry a miniature ship; its cargo, its rigging, are blooms of the season, bluebells and wall-flowers; the ship is borne from door to door, where stand the smiling farmers and their wives; none is too poor to add a penny to the store. As the company vanishes at the turn of the lane, we feel that the merriment of the children has more poetically rendered the charm of the season than even the song of the birds. ”

“ The German game, as is often the case with German children's games and ballads in general, is more modernized than in the other tongues, and has become a coarse jest. It is represented how the farmer sows his oats, cuts it, binds it, carries it home, stores it, threshes it, takes it to market, sells it, spends the money in carousal, comes home drunk, and quarrels with his wife, because she has cooked him no supper! ”

“ It is only within the century that America has become the land of motion and novelty. During the long colonial period, the quiet towns, less in communication with distant settlements than with the mother-country itself, removed from the currents of thought circulating in Europe, were under those conditions in which tradition is most prized and longest maintained. The old English lore in its higher branches, the ballad and the tale, already belonging to the past at the time of the settlement, was only sparingly existent among the intelligent class from which America was peopled ”

“ It is the necessity of general currency, and the difficulty of obtaining it, which restricts the variation of one and of the other. If a sport is familiar only to one locality or one set of children, it passes away as soon as the youthful fancy of that region grows weary of it. Besides, the old games, which have prevailed and become familiar by a process of natural selection, are usually better adapted to children's taste than any new inventions can be; they are recommended by the quaintness of formulas which come from the remote past, and strike the young imagination as a sort of sacred law. ”

“ Every house, every hill in the neighborhood, is the locality of an adventure. Every drive includes spots already famous in supposed history, and passes by the abodes of fancied acquaintances. Into a land with few traditions the imagination of six years has introduced a whole cycle of romance.
If the family or vicinity contains a group of such minds, fancy takes outward form in dramatic performance. The school history is vitalized into reality; wars are waged and battles performed in a more extended version, while pins and beans signify squadrons and regiments. ”

“ We see that chivalric warfare, the building and siege of castles, the march and the charge of armies, equally supplied material for childish mimicry. We learn how, in this manner, the social state and habits of half a thousand years ago unconsciously furnish the amusement of youth, when the faith and fashion of the ancient day is no longer intelligible to their elders.
It will be obvious that many of the game-rhymes in this collection were not composed by children. ”

“ The ballad has thus passed into the round. An inconsequent but musical babble, like that of a brook or a child, has replaced the severe accents of the ancient narration. But in English—why, we will not pause to inquire—it is not so. Whatever of this kind once existed has passed away, leaving but little trace. All that is poetical or pretty is the relic of past centuries; and when the ancient [Pg 10] treasure is spent, absolute prose succeeds. The modern soil is incapable of giving birth to a single flower.
Our rhymes, therefore, belong almost entirely to the third class—the game proper. ”

“ Thus lads might draw grasses, for the purpose of deciding to which of the two a maiden might belong as a partner. This was so usual a way of deciding a controversy that it was even recognized in law, where the parties to a suit drew straws from a thatch or sheaf. Children still resort to a like arbitrament, where one holds the straws in the hand, and the other draws, the shorter straw winning. To our surprise, we find that girls in Massachusetts still keep up the mediæval usage; they draw stalks of grass in the field, and match them, to decide who shall begin a game—be "it." ”

“ Hence the sanctity attributed in mediæval times to the architects of bridges. The Devil, or (in more ancient guise) the elemental spirit of the land, who detests any interference with the solitude he loves, has an especial antipathy to bridges. His repeated and successful attempts to interfere with such a structure, until he is bought off with an offering like that of Iphigenia, are recorded in legends which attach to numerous bridges in Europe. It is on such supernatural opposition that the English form of the game appears to turn. ”

“ It is plain that our counting rhymes cannot have been formed from the "Anglo-Cymric score," since the latter is only in use in parts of England, while the former are common to many European nations. Nothing, however, prevents the supposition that they owe their origin to a similar root. All that can be said is, that no modern language is responsible for the practice, which can hardly be supposed to have originated within the last thousand years.
Turning now to other types of formulas for counting, we see that any game-rhyme or nursery verse may do duty for such. ”

“ This game without doubt is the most curious of our collection, both on account of its own quaintness, and because of the extraordinary relation in which it stands to the child's lore of Europe. We have, in a note, endeavored to show that our American versions give the most ancient and adequate representation now existing of a childish drama which has diverged into numerous branches, and of which almost every trait has set up for itself as an independent game. ”

“ The abundance of flowers, the excursions to the mountains, the decoration of houses, and the very name of Flora, prove that, whatever abuses may have introduced themselves, and whatever primitive superstitions may have been intermingled—superstitions to an early time harmless and pure, and only in the decline of faith the source of offence and corruption—the population of ancient Italy shared that natural and innocent delight in the season of blossom which afterwards affected to more conscious expression Chaucer and Milton. ”

“ We infer, therefore, that the game, apparently so natural an invention, originally represented some form of the world-wide story of the "Sleeping Beauty." If this be so, to explain its history would lead us to write of Northern lay and mediæval legend; we should have to examine the natural symbolism of primitive religions, and the loves of ancient gods. The kissing-romp of a New England village would be connected with the poetry and romance of half the world. ”

“ The existence of any children's tradition in America, maintained independently of print, has hitherto been scarcely noticed. Yet it appears that, in this minor but curious branch of folk-lore, the vein in the United States is both richer and purer than that so far worked in Great Britain. These games supply material for the elucidation of a subject hitherto obscure: they exhibit the true relation of ancient English lore of this kind to that of the continent of Europe ”

“ In other parts of the town, a German may live for years, needing and using in business and social intercourse no tongue but his own, and may return to Europe innocent of any knowledge of the English speech. Children of such residents speak German in their homes, and play with each other the games they have brought with them from the Fatherland. But they all speak English also, are familiar with the songs which American children sing, and employ these too in their sports. There is no transference from one tongue to another, unless in a few cases, when the barrier of rhyme does not exist. ”

“ It is in the nature of things that children, conversant with these ideas, should have dramatized them in their sports. We see no [Pg 211] reason, with the German writers, to go back to ancient Northern mythology; nor do we find any ground for believing that our game is more likely to be of Teutonic than Romance descent.
We suspect, however, that that part of the sport which relates to the warfare of good and evil powers does not belong to the original idea, but that a still more primitive game has taken on an ending which was common to many amusements in the Middle Ages. ”

“ Tales of ogres and ogresses, who carried off and devoured young children, must have been as familiar in the Roman nursery as in our own.
The trait of limping, characteristic of "witches" in games, is equally ancient. That such demons are defective in one foot is expressed by the ancient Greek name "Empusa" (literally One-foot) , to whom was attributed an ass's hoof, a representation which contributed to the mediæval idea of the devil. A child's game, in which a boy, armed with a knotted [Pg 221] handkerchief, pursues his comrades, hopping on one foot, is known in France as "The Limping Devil." ”

“ The player whose color is named, if he has the ball, must pass it behind his back to another, saying, "Not White, Red has it." Whoever is caught in passing the ball, or names a color not in the game, or fails to answer when his name is called, must pay forfeit, or have his face marked with burned cork. It will be seen that the Swiss game corresponds to the American, except that in the latter the ball is concealed instead of being passed round; but we think it likely that the memory of our informant (a child) may have been at fault in this respect. ”

“ This is an out-of-doors game. Each boy represents a wild beast, and has a separate tree, which represents his "den." Any player who leaves his den is liable to be tagged by any who has started out at a later moment. The best runner usually ventures first, a second pursues him, and so on, until all may be out at once. If a player can tag any one whom he has a right to capture, he takes him home to his own den, and the latter must help him to take the rest. The pursuer cannot be tagged while bringing home his prisoner. ”

“ As the specimen given shows, it closely resembles the ancient game of "Five-stones." We are informed, on Japanese authority, that stones are habitually used by boys in playing, and that the number of these varies. There can be no doubt that the two forms of this amusement are branches of the same root; and we thus have an example of a game which, having preserved its essential characteristics for thousands of years, has fairly circumnavigated the globe, so that the two currents of tradition, westward and eastward, from Europe and Asia, have met in America. ”

“ In one version of the game, which comes to us from an Irish source, green is for grief, red for joy, black for mourning, and white for death. In another such version, white is for angels, and is the chosen color; a reading we would willingly adopt, as probably more ancient, and as expressing the original seriousness of the whole, and the feeling which the color of white symbolized. In more common Irish phrase, green is for Irish, yellow for Orangemen. In Cincinnati, purple is for kings and queens, gray for Quakers. In a Connecticut variation, yellow is for glad folks. ”

“ If the very name of the chorus has survived in Europe to the present day, so the character of the classic round is perpetuated in the ring games of modern children. Only in a single instance, but that a most curious one, have the words of a Greek children's round been preserved. This is the "tortoise-game," given by Pollux, and we will let his words speak for themselves:
"The tortoise is a girl's game, like the pot; one sits, and is called tortoise. The rest go about asking:
"O torti-tortoise, in the ring what doest thou?" ”