DUCK AND DRAKE.

BUTLER, in his Hudibras (p. ii. canto iii. 1. 302), makes it one of the important qualifications of his conjurer to tell

"What figur'd slates are best to make

On wat❜ry surface duck or drake."

I find the following elegant description of this sport in an ancient church writer (Minucius Felix, ed. 1712, p. 28), which evinces its high antiquity: "Pueros videmus certatim gestientes, testarum in mare jaculationibus ludere. Is lusus est, testam teretem, jactatione fluctuum lævigatam, legere de litore: eam testam plano situ digitis comprehensam, inclinem ipsum atque humilem, quantum potest, super undas inrotare: ut illud jaculum vel dorsum maris raderet, vel enataret, dum leni impetu labitur; vel summis fluctibus tonsis emicaret, emergeret, dum assiduo saltu sublevatur. Is se in pueris victorem ferebat, cujus testa et procurreret longius, et frequentius exsiliret."

FOOT-BALL.

MISSON says, p. 307, "In winter, foot-ball is a useful and charming exercise. It is a leather ball about as big as one's head, filled with wind. This is kick'd about from one to t'other in the streets, by him than can get at it, and that is all the art of it."

FAYLES.

NARES, in his Glossary, 1822, says: "Fayles, a kind of game at tables.

'He's no precisian, that I'm certain of,

Nor rigid Roman Catholic. He'll play

At fayles and tick-tack; I have heard him swear.'

B. Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, iii. 3.

"Mr. Douce has thus explained it from a MS. in the British Museum: it is a very old table game, and one of the numerous

varieties of back-gammon that were formerly used in this country. It was played with three dice, and the usual number of men or pieces. The peculiarity of the game depended on the mode of first placing the men on the points. If one of the players threw some particular throw of the dice, he was disabled from bearing off any of his men, and therefore fayled in winning the game; and hence the appellation of it.

"In Gifford's note on the above passage of Jonson, it is said: 'It was a kind of tric-trac, which was meant by ticktack in the same passage.' Mr. Douce refers also to the English translation of Rabelais. Strutt mentions it, and refers to the same MS., but gives no particulars. Sports and Pastimes, p. 283."

GOFF, OR GOLF.

STRUTT Considers this as one of the most ancient games played with the ball that require the assistance of a club or bat. "In the reign of Edward III. the Latin name cambuca was applied to this pastime, and it derived the denomination, no doubt, from the crooked club or bat with which it was played; the bat was also called a bandy from its being bent, and hence the game itself is frequently written in English bandy-ball. It should seem that goff was a fashionable game among the nobility at the commencement of the seventeenth century, and it was one of the exercises with which Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., occasionally amused himself, as we learn from the following anecdote recorded by a person who was present: At another time, playing at goff, a play not unlike to pale-maille, whilst his schoolmaster stood talking with another, and marked not his highness warning him to stand further off; the prince, thinking he had gone aside, lifted up his goff-club to strike the ball; mean tyme one standing by said to him, Beware that you hit not master Newton, wherewith he, drawing back his hand, said, Had I done 80, I had but paid my debts."

Dr. Jamieson derives golf from the Dutch kolf, a club. Wachter derives it from klopp-en, to strike. Golf and foot-ball appear to have been prohibited in Scotland by King James II.

in 1457, and again in 1481, by James IV. The ball used at this game was stuffed very hard with feathers. Strutt says that this game is much practised in the north of England; and Dr. Jamieson, that it is a common game in Scotland.'

GOOSE RIDING.

A GOOSE, whose neck is greased, being suspended by the legs to a cord tied to two trees or high posts, a number of men on horseback riding full speed attempt to pull off the head, which, if they accomplish, they win the goose. This has been practised in Derbyshire within the memory of persons now living. Douce says, his worthy friend Mr. Lumisden informed him that when young he remembered the sport of "riding the goose" at Edinburgh. A bar was placed across the road, to which a goose, whose neck had been previously greased, was tied. At this the candidates, as before mentioned, plucked. A print of this barbarous custom may be seen in the Trionfi, &c., della Venetia.2

In Newmarket; or an Essay on the Turf, 1771, ii. 174, we read: "In the northern part of England it is no unusual diversion to tie a rope across a street, and let it swing about the distance of ten yards from the ground. To the middle of this a living cock is tied by the legs. As he swings in the air, a set of young people ride one after another, full speed, under

I See Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 8; Jamieson's Etym. Dict. in voce. In the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1795, p. 145, mention is made of shinty match, a game also peculiar to North Britain, something similar to the golf. Dr. Jamieson calls "shinty an inferior species of golf, generally played at by young people." He adds, "in London this game is called hackie. It seems to be the same which is designed not in Gloucest.; the name being borrowed from the ball, which is made of a knotty piece of wood. Gl. Grose." Etym. Dict. v. Shinty.

2 See also Menestrier, Traité des Tournois, p. 346. In Paullinus de Candore, p. 264, we read: "In Dania, tempore quadragesimali Belgæ rustici in insula Amack, anserem (candidum ego vidi), fune alligatum, inque sublimi pendentem, habent, ad quem citatis equis certatim properant, quique caput ei prius abruperit, victor evasit." Concerning the practice of swarming up a pole after a goose placed at top, see Sauval, Antiquités de Paris, ii. 696.

the rope, and, rising in their stirrups, catch at the animal's head, which is close clipped and well soaped in order to elude the grasp. Now he who is able to keepe his seat in his saddle and his hold of the bird's head, so as to carry it off in his hand, bears away the palm, and becomes the noble hero of the day."

HANDICAP.

[1660, Sept. 18th. "To the Mitre Tavern in Wood Street, a house of the greatest note in London. Here some of us fell to handicap, a sport that I never knew before, which was very good." Pepys's Diary, i. 135.]

HANDY-DANDY.

BOYER, in his Dictionary, calls handy-dandy (a kind of play with the hands), "Sorte de jeu des mains." Ainsworth, in his Dictionary, renders handy-dandy by "digitis micare; to move the fingers up and down very swiftly, the number of which, or several fingers were guessed at for the determining things in question, as they hit or mistook the number of fingers." Douce thinks this is a mistake. Johnson says:

"Handy-dandy, a play in which children change hands and places: See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief! Hark, in thine ear: change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?"" King Lear, iv. 6.

Malone seems to have given the best interpretation. "Handy-dandy," he says, "is, I believe, a play among children, in which something is shaken between two hands, and then a guess is made in which hand it is retained. See Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: Bazzicchiare, to shake between hands; to play handy-dandy."

ornelius Scriblerus, in forbidding certain sports to his son Martin till he is better informed of their antiquity, says: Neither cross and pile, nor ducks and drakes, are quite so

ancient as handy-dandy, though Macrobius and St. Augustine take notice of the first, and Minutius Foelix describes the latter; but handy-dandy is mentioned by Aristotle, Plato, and Aristophanes." Pope's Works, vi. 115. He adds (ibid. p. 116): "The play which the Italians call cinque and the French mourre is extremely ancient; it was played by Hymen and Cupid at the marriage of Psyche, and termed by the Latins, digitis micare."

HEADS AND TAILS.

THIS sport is undoubtedly alluded to in Macrobius, Saturn. lib. i. c. 7. "Cum pueri denarios in sublime jactantes, capita aut navia, lusu teste vetustatis exclamant."

HOOP.

Four or

To run the hoop; an ancient marine custom. more boys, having their left hands tied fast to an iron hoop, and each of them a rope, called a nettle, in their right, being naked to the waist, wait the signal to begin; this being made by a stroke with a cat-of-nine-tails, given by the boatswain to one of the boys, he strikes the one before him, and every one does the same. At first the blows are but gently administered; but each, irritated by the strokes from the boy behind him, at length lays it on in earnest. This was anciently practised when a ship was wind-bound.

HOT COCKLES.

[ONE boy sits down, and another, who is blindfolded, kneels and lays his head on his knee, placing at the same time his open hand on his own back. He then cries, "Hot cockles, hot." Another then strikes his open hand, and the sitting