THE OLDEST GAMES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 44, 30 August 1928, Page 23

THE OLDEST GAMES

TIP-CAT 4000 YEARS AGO Of all known games those played by children are far the oldest. : Lawn tennis, for example, is a thing of yesterday, so to speak. Even cricket is no more than a few centuries old. But tip-eat was played in ancient Egypt four thousand years ago; and recent excavations at Kish, near Babylon, have shown' that the game of knuckle-bones.was a favourite one with children there at an eyen more remote period. City-bred boys and girls play those old games to-day, for children are very conservative. But they are also very inventive, and are constantly evolving new ones. With a ball—often made of rags or paper —the pebbles of the road, tin cans, cherry and date stones, some string, cigarette picture cards, buttons, and things like that,.they play social games, some of them involving careful ■team work, and; requiring a deal of 'memory, skill, and activity. ALL THE WAY FROM CHINA. Many of them are the matured inventions of generations of their kind, like, for example, "Prisoner's Base," "Release,' and "Jimmy, Jimmy Nacko." Some few are modern importations. Mr. .-Norman Douglas, in "London Street Games," has been at pains to trace; the origin of these games, and in some cases his inquiries have led him very far afield. Take "Queenic," for instance. That is a "soft" game, usually played by girls, but sometimes the boys will condescent to give it their patronage. One bo}' stands on the kerbstone with, his back to the street, and the other boys call him "Queenie." He throws the ball backwards over his shoulder, where the others are standing to catch it. As soon as one of- them has it they all whip their hands behind their backs, and Queenie has "to turn round and guess who has it. . If he guesses right he goes on being "Queenie." If he is wrong the boy who has the ball becomes "Queenie." This game, says Mr. Douglas, has been played from time immemorial in China, where it is called "Quinain," and it probably came to London by way of the docks and Pennyfields. j Amongst the iivc-hundred-ycar-old stroot games that the author has collected and classified arc many so oddly named as to give riso to all sorts of conjectures. "Egg in tho Cup" is, of course, fairly descriptive. But what of "Cut-a-Lump," "Dead Donkey," "Three Eggs Rotten," "Swimming in Blue Waters," "Wall Barn Cup," ','Swolo," "Babbit in the Hutch," "Strike Up, Lay Down," "Dust Holes," and "Teaser"? A striking example of the inventiveness of the young mind is afforded by the diversity of the games played with cigarette, cards. No fewer than twenty of these have been collected by Mr. Douglas, all governed by rigid rules that must on no account bo departed from; and to each its own name. Pantomime singing games are played almost entirely by girls. "You can get as many of these songs as yoit like from the girls if you care to ask them," says Mr. Douglas. "They are far less shy about them than tho boys are." But the girls' games are not so poetic as are the boys'; they sing chiefly of work and food, sewing, and cleaning. One, beginning "When I was a young girl," played and sung by a number of children acting in concert, depietr the

life of atypical girl.of- tho: working classes from tho cradle, well nigh to tho grave. She goos to school, goes courting, gets married, rocks her baby, and finishes irp as a grandmother seated knitting by tho fireside; each verse having- its appropriate action that is never departed from.