Norman Douglas

“ But, as I was saying, marbles are not played as they used to be. The police are getting more interfering every day; they tell the boys to move on and not block up the pavement, and that interrupts them in the middle of a game and makes them half wild; and if you don’t clear off at once, they kick your marbles into the gutter where they get lost down a drain, and that makes you altogether mad. Aunt Eliza explains [Pg 113] things by saying that marble-games wear out boys’ clothes at the knees and that mothers are growing to be “more careful in such matters.” ”

“ Perkins says, speaking of ball-games, exactly what I always say, which is this: that there’s a difficulty about ball-games, which is this: that most of them generally need a ball; meaning you can’t play with a ball unless you have a ball to play with. And you generally haven’t got one—meaning [Pg 7] the children. And then the trouble begins. Because then you have to start thinking about something that doesn’t need a ball.
Somebody or other may have a top, for those who care about this kind of game. Top-games are not as fashionable as they used to be ”

“ 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 [Pg 159] those other games ”

“ 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. ”

“ ROUND THE JAM-POT, are really duty-games, of which I must tell you later on.
And if you have no caps, which you sometimes haven’t, you must just find something else to play with. [Pg 12] Buttons, for instance—everybody knows the old game of BUTTONS (or BANG-OUT, or BANGINGS) where you pitch them against a wall and have to measure the intervals between them with the span of your fingers and always end up with a row about cheating distances. You can make a fine gamble out of BUTTONS if you play the same game with halfpennies; you can win quite a lot, when there are no coppers about.... ”

“ And thinking it over, I believe the cinematograph is to blame: it makes them want more excitement, and then it gives it them; and then it makes them want still more, and then it gives them still more; quite restless, in fact, it makes them, and I shouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later it weren’t responsible for a new kind of boy altogether. ”

“ And other children’s sports are MARY, MARY and WEEK DAYS (a ball-game played by eight of them) and another one called SHEEP, SHEEP COME HOME, where one line of children represents the sheep, and another line the wolves; and behind the wolves stands the sheeps’ mother—many of these games are “mother-games”—who calls the sheep; but [Pg 101] as they run to her they are caught by the wolves. ”

“ That reminds me that the last two must not be mixed up with CHERRY-BOB ARCH, a gambling game for bigger lads, quite simple but rather risky, played with cherry-stones and the lid of an old wooden box in which spaces and numbers have been marked out. You throw and—well, you must ask some of the boys higher up the street....
Now small children don’t invent games (it’s the older ones who do that) and so they carry on a good few which used to be played long ago and which the others don’t care for [Pg 104] any more. That accounts for the queer sports you see among the kids. ”

“ And that reminds me of some other games of the smaller children—those played with five stones (boys) or gobs and bonsers (girls) . Gobs (cobs) are shaped like dice, or ought to be; and a bonser or bonk or buck or bonster is a large marble that bounces from the ground (bouncer) , about the size of a forty-eighter. You can buy four gobs and a bonk for a half-penny; you can also make them yourself—the gobs or stones, I mean—out of bits of porcellain and pebbles and winkle-shells; but the bought ones are the best, because, for one reason, you have to pay for them. ”

“ The small children have a chalk-game all to themselves called POLLY POLLY WHAT’S THE TIME, where they draw a sort of clock on the pavement and cover up parts of it with their jackets or anything else. ”

“ 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 [Pg 156] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ if you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things. ”

“ What I said about paving-stones reminds me of MARBLES. We used to play them in the winter, on the pavement. But marlies are going down in the world, that’s certain. It’s a good while since I played, but I still remember the names of a few kinds—Toms, and Alleys, and Glarnies, and Miggies; and Forty-eighter and Twenty-fourer and Twelver and Sixer and Fourer and Three-er. You hardly ever hear of a Forty-eighter nowadays. The smaller stone marbles were called Tich ”

“ Now proper boys won’t touch a marble that bounces from the ground—I can’t tell you why, but there it is; so they generally use a fifth stone instead of a bonk, as in this last game, which is the boys’ way of “Saving Baby’s Life”. ”

“ You can get as many of these songs out of the girls as you like, if you care to come round and ask for them; you’ll find the girls far less shy about their games than the boys are. And you’ll also notice that they’re just as good at inventing sports—the boys show up best in the duty-games, and the girls in their songs. ”

“ Talking of real stones, there’s no [Pg 131] doubt whatever that games played with them are the oldest in the world, together with the mud-larks—excepting perhaps those that are not played with things at all, like hide-and-seek and some of the old “he” games. And it’s just wonderful what you can do with stones. But they are dying out, all the same; because the worst of it is, there are not half enough stones about, nowadays ”

“ But some of the best sports are those which they make up without anything at all, just out of their heads, like STAGS, and FOX-HUNTING, and SHOEING THE WILD HORSE (you need confederates for this, and a fresh boy; but it’s quite a respectable game) , and TOMMY ALL ROUND, and BLIND DONKEY, and SAILOR, and HORSE-SOLDIERS. Horse-soldiers (also called FLYING ANGELS) is rather rough, and so is COCK AND HEN FIGHT. Or hide-and-seek games like I spy—spit in your eye, which goes like this:—
[Pg 20]
“Five or ten can play, one has to hide wile the Others hide. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It’s a kind of top after the style of a klondyke. It’s too heavy to rise from the ground like a racer. You simply can’t get a rise out of a dumb-bargee. Perhaps that accounts for the name. Because it’s easy enough to get a rise out of an ordinary bargee, isn’t it? And when you do, he’s not exactly what you call “dumb”, is he? Not the bargees I’ve known.
And if you have no tops, you can make up games with your caps or [Pg 10] boots or jackets. Dead man’s rise (also called DEAD MAN’S DARK SCENERY or COAT) is one of these jacket-games, where one party has to hide, covered up in their coats. ”

“ The Misser of the ball throes it at one of the player and if he misses it [Pg 3] is a egg to him and if he hits its a egg to the one he hit. After the throer has hit his man—the man has to throw it up again. If one of the player catch the Ball they throw it up again and call out the name, the total of egg to get you out is three. After the game is over the winner has clockwork on the Losers; they each stand up against a wall wile the winner throes at their heads with the ball. ”

“ Once the bullet is there, that soldier stands for good. But while he is still being built, the other boy, if he throws well, can set up another soldier in the corresponding side-field in shorter time, and once that soldier has his bullet—why, he can shoot the other fellow opposite, if he’s not complete, and finish him off for good. ”

“ In release you take sides and catch prisoners; you have to touch their heads and “crown” them; that’s what makes them prisoners. And that’s what makes them so wild—because the other chaps can’t always release them; and that’s why the old people bar the game—because you always get your clothes torn ”

“ A boy first puts his stone on a place half-way between the two, he spins his top picks it up and makes it spin in the palm of his hand and chips his stone towards the line. The first boy who gets his stone beyond the line he wins. ”

“ It’s quite possible that it never meant anything at all, to begin with. The boys sometimes call it High Bobbery—it’s a way they have, of working the old names round into a sort of sense, when they’ve forgotten their real meaning. I must write and ask Aunt Eliza; she knows everything (thinks she does) . As to Jimmy Nacko—they sometimes call it Jimmy Wagtail, but one of the lads tells me it means “Neck, ho!” which only shows how they like twisting the names about. (That’s why they now say shuttlecock instead of shuttlecork, because they forget it’s played with a cork) . ”

“ First of all you pick out a stone which will be the bonk, then lay the remaining four on the left hand, and then by hitting the hand which holds the stones one of them flies into the air, then when it comes down the player must catch it or else he is out. When all the stones have been caught in this way they are laid on the hand in two’s, then in three’s, and when that is done all the four are caught, but this time the bonk must be picked up while the others are coming down. ”

“ It’s the only really dangerous game we have, FOLLOW THE LEADER. Because of course the bravest boy is chosen as leader, one who crosses the road just in front of some heavy van and then goes and raps at all the doors of the neighbours who rush out in a rage to see what’s the matter; so that by the time the third man has done the same there’s sometimes a smash-up and always a row. A grand old game is DOING EACH OTHERS’ DAGS, as they call it ”

“ No, I’ve nothing against picture-games except that their names are not as good as those of the duty [Pg 125] sports and that they don’t give the youngsters any chance of running about and using their legs. ”

“ And then the well-known CHALK-CHASE. [Pg 138] There are different kinds of CHALK-CHASE, such as CONVICTS AND WARDERS (or TRACKING THE CONVICTS) and SCOUTS; but the real old CHALK-CHASE, as played by my friends of the “Char-charcoal-chalk-chase-club”, goes like this:—
“You pick parteis and then they clip for First outing. Each player has a peice of chalk which he has to draw arroes the hounds follow & they must cross out the arroes until the Others are caught then its the Others turn”.
Played it yourself, maybe?
And there! I nearly forgot some of the best of all these sports: the touch games. ”

“ French touch is as good as any of those I can remember just now; it is played like this:
[Pg 140]
“Fr tutch run after another boy and tutch him any were and the boy you tutched has to keep his hand on the place were you tutched and go ea (“he”) and run after another boy and tutch him any were and he has to keep his hand on the place where he tutched and go ea and run after another boy and tutch him any were and he has to keep his hand on the place were he tutched and go ea and run after another boy and tutch him any were etc.” ”