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412

COCKALL.

The altar is not here foure-squar'd,
Nor in a form triangular,

Nor made of glasse, or wood, or stone,
But of a little transverse bone.
Which boys and bruckeld children call
(Playing for points and pins) Cockall.

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HERRICK'S HESPERIDES, p. 102.

IN the English translation of Levinus Lemnius, 1658, p. 368, we read: "The ancients used to play at Cockall, or casting of huckle-bones, which is done with smooth sheeps' bones. The Dutch call them Pickelen, wherewith our young maids that are not yet ripe use to play for a husband, and young married folks despise these as soon as they are married. But young men use to contend one with another with a kind of bone taken forth of oxe-feet. The Duch call them coten, and they play with these at a set time of the year. Moreover cockals, which the Dutch call Teelings, are different from dice, for they are square, with four sides, and dice have six. Cockals are used by maids amongst us, and do no ways waste any one's estate. For either they passe away the time with them, or if they have time to be idle, they play for some small matter, as for chesnuts, filberds, pins, buttons, and some such juncats."

[Let no Christian that hath true grace

View these with a malignant face;

But pray that Heaven their lights would snuff,
Cause Satan playes at blind-man-buff

With men, and hoods their intellects,
Casting up cock-all for those sects.

Naps upon Parnassus, 1658.] In Langley's abridgment of Polydore Vergile, f. 1, we have another description of this game: "There is a game also that is played with the posterne bone in the hynder foote of a sheepe, oxe, gote, fallowe, or redde dere, whiche in Latin is called talus. It hath foure chaunces: the ace point, that is named Canis, or Canicula, was one of the sides; he that cast i

In the Sanctuarie of Salvation, &c., translated from the Latin a Levinus Lemnius by Henry Kinder, 8vo. Lond. pr. by H. Singleton, p. 144. we read these bones are called "huckle-bones, or coytes."

leyed doune a peny, or so muche as the gamers were agreed on; the other side was called Venus, that signifieth seven. He that cast the chaunce wan sixe and all that was layd doune for the castyng of Canis. The two other sides were called Chius and Senio. He that did throwe Chius wan three. And he that cast Senio gained four. This game (as I take it) is used of children in Northfolke, and they cal it the Chaunce Bone; they playe with three or foure of those bones together; it is either the same or very lyke to it."

See also the Account of the Statue belonging to a Group originally composed of Two Boys who quarrelled at the Game of Tali, now preserved in the British Museum. Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Townley Gallery, i. 305.

Dr. Clarke, in his Travels in Russia, 1810, i. 177, says: "In all the villages and towns from Moscow to Woronetz, as in other parts of Russia, are seen boys, girls, and sometimes even old men, playing with the joint-bones of sheep. This game is called dibbs by the English. It is of very remote antiquity; for I have seen it very beautifully represented on Grecian vases; particularly on a vase in the collection of the late Sir William Hamilton, where a female figure appeared most gracefully delineated kneeling upon one knee, with her right arm extended, the palm downwards, and the bones ranged along the back of her hand and arm. The second in the act of throwing up the bones in order to catch them. In this manner the Russians play the game."

COCKLE-BREAD.

[THE Times of 1847 contains a curious notice of a very old game, which deserves recording before it be buried in the massy files of that gigantic journal. A witness, whose conduct was impugned as light and unbecoming, is desired to inform

1 For further information relating to this game, as played by the ancients, the reader may consult Joannis Meursii Ludibunda, sive de Ludis Græcorum, Liber singularis, 8vo. Lugd. Bat. 1625, p. 7, v. AΣTPAFAAZMOZ: and Dan. Souterii Palamedes, p. 81; but more particularly, I Tali ed altri Strumenti lusori degli antichi Romani, discritti da Francesco de 'Ficoroni, 4to. Rom. 1734.

the court, in which an action for breach of promise was tried, the meaning of " mounting cockeldy-bread ;" and she explains it as "a play among children," in which one lies down on the floor on her back, rolling backwards and forwards, and repeating the following lines:

"Cockeldy bread, mistley cake,

When you do that for our sake.”

While one of the party so laid down, the rest sat around: and they laid down and rolled in this manner by turns.

This singular game is thus described by Aubrey and Kennett: "Young wenches have a wanton sport which they call moulding of cockle-bread, viz. they get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees as high as they can, and then they wabble to and fro, as if they were kneading of dough, and say these words:

"My dame is sick, and gone to bed,

And I'll go mould my cockle-bread!

Up with my heels and down with my head,
And this is the way to mould cockle-bread."

These lines are still retained in the modern nursery-rhyme books, but their connexion with the game of cockeldy-bread is by no means generally understood. There was formerly some kind of bread called cockle-bread, and cokille-mele is mentioned in a very early MS. quoted in Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaisms, p. 260. In Peele's play of the Old Wives Tale, a voice thus speaks from the bottom of a well:

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For fear you make the golden beard to weep.

Fair maiden, white and red,

Stroke me smooth and comb my head,

And thou shalt have some cockell-bread."

Here we have a difficult passage in a well-known early dramatist explained by the evidence of an uneducated rustic girl; and such instances illustrate the use of collecting the quickly vanishing fragments of our provincial customs and language. The Westmoreland version runs thus:

"My grandy's seeke,

And like to dee,

And I'll make her

Some cockelty bread, cockelty bread,

And I'll make her

Some cockelty bread."]

CRICKET.

"A GAME most usual in Kent, with a cricket-ball, bowl'd and struck with two cricket-bats between two wickets. From Sax. cryc, baculus, a bat or staff; which also signifies fulcimentum, a support or prop, whence a cricket or little stool to sit upon. Cricket-play among the Saxons was also called stef-plege, Staff-play." Kennett's MS. Glossary.

CROSS-RUFF.

["A GAME at cards, thus alluded to in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1693:

"Christmas to hungry stomachs gives relief,

With mutton, pork, pies, pasties, and roast beef;
And men at cards spend many idle hours,

At loadum, whisk, cross-ruff, put, and all-fours."]

CURCUDDOCH, CURCUDDIE.

"To dance Curcuddie or Curcuddoch," says Dr. Jamieson, in his Etymological Dictionary, "is a phrase used (in Scotland) to denote a play among children, in which they sit on their houghs, and hop round in a circular form. Many of these old terms, which now are almost entirely confined to the mouths of children, may be overlooked as nonsensical or merely arbitrary. But the most of them, we are persuaded, are as regularly formed as any other in the language. The first syllable of this word is undoubtedly the verb curr, to sit on the houghs or hams. The second may be from Teut. kudde, a flock; kudd-en, coire, convenire, congregari, aggregari; kudde wijs, gregatim, catervatim, q. to curr together.' The same game is called Harry Hurcheon in the north of Scotland, either from the resemblance of one in this position to a hurcheon, or hedge-hog, squatting under a bush; or from the Belg. hurk-en, to squat, to hurkle."

DRAWING DUN OUT OF THE MIRE,

SAYS Steevens, seems to have been a game. In an old collection of satires, epigrams, &c., I find it 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.

We find this game noticed at least as early as Chaucer's time, in the Manciple's Prologue.

"Then gan our hoste to jape and to play,

And sayd, sires, what? Dun is in the mire."

The method in which this game was played is described in Gifford's Ben Jonson, vii. 283.

DRAW GLOVES.

THERE was a sport entitled "Draw Gloves," of which, however, I find no description. The following jeu d'esprit is found in a curious collection of poetical pieces, entitled a Pleasant Grove of New Fancies; 1657, p. 56:

"At Draw Gloves wee'l play,

And prethee let's lay

A wager, and let it be this:

Who first to the summe

Of twenty doth come,

Shall have for his winning a kisse."

See also Herrick's Hesperides, p. 111.

"Draw-gloves; a game played by holding up the fingers representing words by their different positions, as we say, talking with the fingers." Halliwell's Dictionary, p. 316.

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