CURIOUSLY, JAMES HALLIWELL’S DICTIONARY OF ARCHAIC WORDS proves to be an entertaining source for games of old. My source as well is archaic: Though published in 1989, it’s a facsimile edition of a book originally published in 1850.
Dictionary of Archaic Words, by James Orchard Halliwell, Bracken, 1989.
James Halliwell-Phillipps’ antiquarian proclivities led to his notoriety: According to Wikipedia, “In 1841, while at Cambridge, Halliwell dedicated his book Reliquae Antiquae to Sir Thomas Phillipps, the noted bibliomaniac. Phillipps invited Halliwell to stay at his estate, Middle Hill.”
“There,” Wikipedia continues, “Halliwell met Phillipps’s daughter, Henrietta, to whom he soon proposed marriage. However, also around this time, Halliwell was accused of stealing manuscripts from Trinity College, Cambridge. Although never prosecuted, Phillipps’s suspicions were aroused and he refused to consent to the marriage. This led to the couple’s elopement in 1842. Phillipps refused ever to see his daughter or Halliwell again.”
But wait, there’s more: From 1845 Halliwell was excluded from the library of the British Museum on account of the Trinity College caper. Wikipedia says, “Halliwell also had a habit, detested by bibliophiles, of cutting up seventeenth-century books and pasting parts he liked into scrapbooks. During his life he destroyed 800 books and made 3,600 scraps.”
By the way, his -Phillipps came in 1872 by way of the will of the grandfather of Henrietta Phillipps (thus, in a sense, settling her father’s tearing the sheet, so to speak).
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, born James Orchard Halliwell, 1820–1889, English Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Portrait by Ernest Edwards.
Here are games tidbits, with quoted entries gleaned from Halliwell’s Dictionary of Archaic Words.
Lug-and-a-Bite. “A boy flings an apple to some distance. All present race for it. The winner bites as fast as he can, his compeers lugging at his ears in the mean time, who bears it as long as he can, and then throws down the apple, when the sport is resumed.”
Apparently until the apple is gone, or everyone retires from sore ears.
Hand-In-and-Hand-Out. “A company of young people are drawn up in a circle, when one of them, pitched upon by the lot, walks round the band and, if a boy, hits a girl, or if a girl, she strikes a boy whom she chooses, on which the party striking and the party struck run in pursuit of each other, till the latter is caught whose lot it then becomes to perform the same part. A game so called was forbidden by statute of Edw. IV.”
Edward IV, 1442–1483, King of England (twice during the War of the Roses: 1461-1470 and 1471-1483.)
Wikipedia notes that “Edward’s court was described by a visitor from Europe as ‘the most splendid … in all Christendom.'” Apparently, though, he didn’t take to kids running around tussling with each other.
Thread-Needle. “A game in which children stand in a row joining hands, the outer one, still holding her neighbor, runs between the others, &c.”
Halliwell quotes a 1751 source: “Eight people, four of each sex, who have arranged themselves together , a man and a woman alternatively, and joining hands like children at thread-needle form’d a straight line that reach’d across the Mall.”
This one sounds like a good giggle.
Sardines. I am reminded of a game describe in my Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 20th Edition: In the game of Sardines, “One person hides and is looked for by everyone else. When someone finds the hider, they join him, so that ultimately all except the final searcher are packed like sardines into a single hiding place. The game is also played by adults, since it provides a legitimate excuse for close physical contact.”
I’ll bet.
On Limits. I am also reminded of my Calc 101 shtick on limits and the expression “for all intents and purposes.” Suppose the young men align on one side of the room and the young ladies on the other. At each count, they halve the distance between them. Of course, they’ll never meet, but…. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023