Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 82

"Howe in the winter, when men kill the fat swine, They get the bladder and blow it great and thin, With many beans or peason put within: It ratleth, soundeth, and shineth clere and fayre, While it is thrown and caste up in the ayre, Eche one contendeth and hath a great delite With foote and with hande the bladder for to smite; If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne, This wise to labour they count it for no payne."

Shrovetide was the great season for football matches;[794] and at a comparatively recent period it was played in Derby, Nottingham, Kingston-upon-Thames, etc.

[794] See "British Popular Customs," 1876, pp. 78, 83, 87, 401.

_Gleek._ According to Drake,[795] this game is alluded to twice by Shakespeare-in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 1):

"Nay, I can gleek upon occasion."

[795] "Shakespeare and his Times," vol. ii. p. 170; see Douce's "Ill.u.s.trations of Shakspeare," pp. 118, 435.

And in "Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5):

"_1 Musician._ What will you give us?

_Peter._ No money, on my faith, but the gleek."

Douce, however, considers that the word _gleek_ was simply used to express a stronger sort of joke, a scoffing; and that the phrase "to give the gleek" merely denoted to pa.s.s a jest upon, or to make a person appear ridiculous.

_Handy-dandy._ A very old game among children. A child hides something in his hand, and makes his playfellow guess in which hand it is. If the latter guess rightly, he wins the article, if wrongly, he loses an equivalent.[796] Sometimes, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, "the game is played by a sort of sleight-of-hand, changing the article rapidly from one hand into the other, so that the looker-on is often deceived, and induced to name the hand into which it is apparently thrown." This is what Shakespeare alludes to by "change places" in "King Lear" (iv. 6): "see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?"[797]

[796] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 199.

[797] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 420.

_Hide-fox and all after._ A children's game, considered by many to be identical with hide-and-seek. It is mentioned by Hamlet (iv. 2). Some commentators think that the term "kid-fox," in "Much Ado About Nothing"

(ii. 3), may have been a technical term in the game of "hide-fox." Some editions have printed it "hid-fox." Claudio says:

"O, very well, my lord: the music ended, We'll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth."

_Hoodman-blind._ The childish sport now called blindman's buff was known by various names, such as hood-wink, blind-hob, etc. It was termed "hoodman-blind," because the players formerly were blinded with their hoods,[798] and under this designation it is mentioned by Hamlet (iii.

4):

"What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?"

[798] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," pp. 499, 500; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 397, 398.

In Scotland this game was called "belly-blind;" and Gay, in his "Shepherd's Week" (i. 96), says, concerning it:

"As once I play'd at blindman's buff, it hapt About my eyes the towel thick was wrapt, I miss'd the swains, and seiz'd on Blouzelind.

True speaks that ancient proverb, 'Love is blind.'"

The term "hoodman" occurs in "All's Well that Ends Well" (iv. 3). The First Lord says: "Hoodman comes!" and no doubt there is an allusion to the game in the same play (iii. 6), "we will bind and hoodwink him;" and in "Macbeth" (iv. 3) Macduff says: "the time you may so hoodwink." There may also have been a reference to falconry-the hawks being hooded in the intervals of sport. Thus, in Latham's "Falconry" (1615), "to hood" is the term used for the blinding, "to unhood" for the unblinding.

_Horse-racing._ That this diversion was in Shakespeare's day occasionally practised in the spirit of the modern turf is evident from "Cymbeline" (iii. 2):

"I have heard of riding wagers, Where horses have been nimbler than the sands That run i' the clock's behalf."

Burton,[799] too, who wrote at the close of the Shakespearian era, mentions the ruinous consequences of this recreation: "Horse races are desports of great men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their fortunes."

[799] "Anatomy of Melancholy;" Drake's "Shakespeare and His Times," vol. ii. p. 298.

_Leap-frog._ One boy stoops down with his hands upon his knees, and others leap over him, every one of them running forward and stooping in his turn. It is mentioned by Shakespeare in "Henry V." (v. 2), where he makes the king say, "If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, ... I should quickly leap into a wife." Ben Jonson, in his comedy of "Bartholomew Fair," speaks of "a leappe frogge chance note."

_Laugh-and-lie-down_ (more properly laugh-and-lay-down) was a game at cards, to which there is an allusion in the "Two n.o.ble Kinsmen" (ii. 1):

"_Emilia._ I could laugh now.

_Waiting-woman._ I could lie down, I'm sure."

_Loggat._ The game so called resembles bowls, but with notable differences.[800] First, it is played, not on a green, but on a floor strewed with ashes. The jack is a wheel of _lignum vitae_, or other hard wood, nine inches in diameter, and three or four inches thick. The loggat, made of apple-wood, is a truncated cone, twenty-six or twenty-seven inches in length, tapering from a girth of eight and a half to nine inches at one end to three and a half or four inches at the other. Each player has three loggats, which he throws, holding lightly the thin end. The object is to lie as near the jack as possible. Hamlet speaks of this game (v. 1): "Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with 'em?" comparing, perhaps, the skull to the jack at which the bones were thrown. In Ben Jonson's "Tale of a Tub"

(iv. 5) we read:

"Now are they tossing of his legs and arms, Like loggats at a pear-tree."

[800] Clark and Wright's "Notes to Hamlet," 1876, pp. 212, 213.

Sir Thomas Hanmer makes the game the same as nine-pins or skittles. He says: "It is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the Thirty-third statute of Henry VIII.;[801] it is the same which is now called kittle-pins, in which the boys often make use of bones instead of wooden pins, throwing at them with another bone instead of bowling."

[801] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," p. 365; Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 522.

_Marbles._ It has been suggested that there is an allusion to this pastime in "Measure for Measure" (i. 3):

"Believe not that the dribbling dart of love Can pierce a complete bosom."

-dribbling being a term used in the game of marbles for shooting slowly along the ground, in contradistinction to _plumping_, which is elevating the hand so that the marble does not touch the ground till it reaches the object of its aim.[802] According to others, a dribbler was a term in archery expressive of contempt.[803]

[802] Baker's "Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i. p. 198.

[803] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 134.

_Muss._ This was a phrase for a scramble, when any small objects were thrown down, to be taken by those who could seize them. In "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13), Antony says:

"Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth."

The word is used by Dryden, in the Prologue to the "Widow Ranter:"

"Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down But there's a muss of more than half the town."

_Nine-Men's-Morris._ This rustic game, which is still extant in some parts of England, was sometimes called "the nine men's merrils," from _merelles_, or _mereaux_, an ancient French word for the jettons or counters with which it was played.[804] The other term, _morris_, is probably a corruption suggested by the sort of dance which, in the progress of the game, the counters performed. Some consider[805] that it was identical with the game known as "Nine-holes,"[806] mentioned by Herrick in his "Hesperides:"

"Raspe playes at nine-holes, and 'tis known he gets Many a tester by his game, and bets."

[804] Douce's "Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare," p. 144.

[805] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 605.

[806] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 368, 369.