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Archiver > GenChat > 1997-09 > 0873180411
From: <>
Subject: Re: Games Ancestors Played
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 02:06:51 -0400 (EDT)
Valerie,
I love the topic you've raised...Games our ancestors played...Perhaps that
might be broadened a little to include other amusements...
Let me suggest some and perhaps someone will fill us in on what they were and
give us some details...I'll spot you a few details here and there...
Aughts and Naughts (does the phrase "Three in a row" mean anything to
you?)...
A Bilbo Catcher was a popular toy regarded today as an Appalachian toy...The
Bilbo Catcher is a ball with a hole drilled into it which has a string
running through the ball, and the other end of the string is attached to a
turned handle with a small curved surface onto which the ball, being swung,
is to be caught and balanced...Much like the Cup and Ball game, this is more
difficult than Cup and Ball...The chief differences between the two are that
the Bilbo Catcher has a much smaller area with which to capture the ball, and
the ball, once caught, is not bounded by walls, and so can easily fall off
rather than being trapped in a cup...
Blind Mans Bluff...Card Games...Chalk and Watercolor Art...Checkers...
Croquet was popular in England in the mid-1850's, and croquet came to America
very soon after it became popular in England...Any ideas as to how American
croquet of the variety you buy at Wal-Mart's is different from croquet of the
mid-1850's?...ONE hint is "size" - the modern sets' pieces are about half the
size of those of the last century...Now keep going...
Cup & Ball was a favorite Victorian era toy...The cup and ball game has been
around for centuries...In concept it sounds very easy to play, but is much
harder to play than it sounds (or am I revealing my lack of
coordination?)...The implements of the game are a ball with a string attached
and a cup into which the ball is to be swung and landed...A more difficult
variant of this game is the Bilbo Catcher.
Dice Games...Dolls...
Dominoes was a quite a fad in this country at one time, much like the
Monopoly Marathons that once swept the country...Dominoes was a game that
originated in China...Any idea when it got here, or how?...
Draughts (more commonly known today as checkers) is an old game that was a
favorite of George Washington.
Fox & Geese is a paddle-shaped board game...Fox and Geese may be played with
another person or by yourself....Anyone know how it's played?...
Graces dates back to the early 1830s...Graces is a game which uses two wooden
throwing rings approximately ten inches in diameter with decorative ribbons
and four catching wands, and was considered an appropriate game for young
ladies and young gentlemen to play indoors...Any guesses as to how it was
played?...(Think about a mobile game of ring toss in which partners are
paired up)...
Hair Art...Hand Puppets...
Hand Shadows upon the wall became something of an art form in the ante-bellum
years...Henry Bursill produced a multitude of illustrations of hand positions
which formed intriguing and wondrous pictures of animals and people for the
entertainment of adults and children alike...In a reprint of the work Hand
Shadows by Bursill, there are eighteen different delights of this art form
which can truly be said to be made by hand, and another sixteen in his work
More Hand Shadows...The equipment required is minimal: a pair of hands, a
light source, a dark room, a surface upon which the shadows may fall, and an
imagination...Now, I have to caution you that if you get the books (I believe
that Dover is responsible for the reprints) you'll be the life of the party
(okay, it probably won't be much of a party, but you'll be the life of
it)...But you have no chance for much success if your hands are stiff and
arthritic like mine, for they wide variety of hand shadows require long
fingers and supple hands...We've found them to be almost as great a hit at
re-enactments (where we have no televisions, radios, video games or computers
fro disctractions) as the occasional sock puppet shows we get when amorous
mates forget that the tents are thin and the light behind them shows a lot...
Hand-Spun and Whipping Tops are two other amusements of long ago...The
Hand-Spun Top is spun between the palms of the hands and requires no string
to put it into motion, making it the the simplest of tops....The Whipping Top
is a turned wooden top that is kept spinning by whipping it with a piece of
twine or rawhide attached to a stick (thus making a whip)...
Hoop & Stick...Basic amusements have not changed much since the beginning of
mankind...This particular toy - a hoop of wood which is roughly two feet in
diameter but only about an inch to two inches wide which is propelled by a
child who taps or whacks the hoop with a rod to keep it rolling as the child
runs with it - is known to have been used by children since the time of the
Pharaohs...If you ever played with one, it now makes you feel kind of old,
doesn't it?...
Hopscotch...
Jump rope has been a favorite game of children for centuries...Out of jump
rope (and hopscotch, too), oddly enough, some elements of history have
survived thanks to the chanted calls passed down from mother to daughter
over long periods of time...Perhaps most notable and relevant to the
ante-bellum and Civil War period is the chant which is known as "Run, Nigger,
Run", or more recently christened The Pateroller Song, a song which slaves
began long before the War Between the States began, and one that continues to
this day through the hopscotch and jump-rope chant...For those who are
interested, I'll be glad to provide some history and the lyrics to that
song...However, it should be noted that the song, created and sung by slaves
and their African American descendants until this day, does use the "n" word
quite a lot...
Jacks...Jumping Jacks...Kaleidoscope...Kick the Can...
Marbles go a long way back...Not restricted to the marbles we know today, the
game of marbles was played during the ante-bellum and War periods with
objects such as nuts, water-rounded pebbles, hardened clay, and anything else
which might pass for being a ball-shaped object...How did your ancestors play
marbles?...What did they use?...
Mumblety-Peg...Played with a knife, mumblety-peg is a variant of Follow The
Leader...The basic form of the game requires any kind of a knife and two or
more players...The object of the exercise is to get the knife to stick in the
ground by having it fall or be flipped or tossed or dropped from various
parts of each person...The first person to play may balance the tip of the
knife blade on his index finger, for instance, and let it fall of the end of
his finger toward the ground...If he makes it stick, every player following
him must do the same...Each person scores a point for accomplishing the
feat...Should he miss, then the next person has the discretion of choosing
how and from where the knife is dropped, thrown, or flipped toward the
ground...The game usually continues until the players are bored with the
futility of the exercise...
Music...
The Needles Eye was once a common game in the Appalachian Mountains...The
Needles Eye is based upon a chant that large groups of children would call
out as they played the game...In general much like Red Rover, the chant was
The needles eye that doth supply
The thread that runs so true;
I stump my toe and down I go,
All for want of you.
At the conclusion of the chanted verse, two lines might form up and someone
from one line dared to come break through the other line...Once one side had
captured two children - a boy and a girl - then that side would make a ring
around them and skip around them, holding hands, chanting any of a dozen or
more chants, most often having to do with those two gretting maried...
Nine Mens Morris..A morris was an English dance from the 17th century, but
this is not a dance, but a board game...Anyone care to discuss this
one?...You can see examples of this game at Old Sutrbridge Village...I
believe they used to sell it there, too...I know that I have made scores of
them for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and War Between the States re-enactments,
a nd kids up to about 70 seem to enjoy it pretty well...
Pick-Up Sticks was a game introduced to the early settlers in America by the
Indians...Yes, Pick-Up Sticks is the same game we all learned when we were
children....Rules and variations differed from area to area, but most had
these rules in common:
1. A group of slender sticks or splinters of approximately the same length
were to be used, somewhere between fifteen and twenty at a time...Often they
would be dyed different colors, a custom dating from the 1700s...
2. The sticks were to be held above the ground at a distance at least equal
to the length of the longest stick or splinter in the bunch...
3. The sticks were to be suddenly released by the person holding them so that
the sticks would fall to the ground and overlap each other...One variation
required that one stick of a different color or marked in some fashion to
distinguish it from the others would be placed in the bunch...
4. The person who had just dropped the sticks began the game, removing one
stick at a time and working through the pile to remove all of the sticks
without causing any of the other sticks to move...The object of the game was
to accumulate more sticks from the pile than the other players removed...
5. In the event that any stick other than the one being removed was moved at
all, that player forfeited his or her turn to the next person...
6. At the end of play, the person with the most sticks won the game...
Pin The Tail on the Donkey...Play Parties (now, you older folks who are
former Primitive Baptists, or who have older living kin who are or were
Primnitive Baptists, or who come from the Appalachias will SURELY know this
one)...
Ring Toss was a versatile game, for it could be played in the parlor in the
winter and on the lawn in the spring and summer....Any details?...
Cutting Silhouettes (which you can learn to do quite well and quickly, by the
way, with the sue of some simple templates...If you want details, I can tell
you where to order the book, if they still print it)...Singing
Games...Stereoscope...Stilts...Story-Telling...
String Figures used to be enormously popular in the mid-19th century, and
enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the early 20th century...While the
study of making string figures is a relatively recent development (the late
19th and early 20th centuries saw the genesis of that study), it has been a
game common among primitive peoples since time immemorial...While the figures
themselves can range from the extremely simple to the highly complex, the
beauty of this pastime is that it requires only a good length of string of
seven feet in length, time which would otherwise be idle, and a measure of
patience...There area number of books that teach you how to make the
figures, but I'll be dogged if I can figure them out...
Teeter-Totter...Viewing Jar (NOT to be confused with the Smother
Box...LOL)...Wind-Up Toys (did you know that they date back to the early
1700's and perhaps earlier, if memory serves me correctly?)...Zoetrope...
Chas
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