OLDEST RECREATIONS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 20 August 1928, Page 5

OLDEST RECREATIONS.

GAiMEB OF THE’ STREET. TIP-OAT 41X10 YEARS AGO. 01 all known games those'played bv ch-i.direai -are- by fa,r the oldest. Lawn tennis' for exam-pile, i-s a thing ol yesterday, so to speak. Even- cricket JS 310 more than a few centuries- old. But tip-cat wia-s- played in ancient Egypt four thousand) years ago; and recent excavations at Ivish, near Babylon, have shown that the- game of knuckle-hones was a favourite one with children tlie-re -at an even more remote period. City-bred hoys land girls play these old games to-day, for children tiro very conservative. llut they are also- very inventive, and ore 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 ■ s tdmg, cigarette- picture cards, buttons ami thing® like that, they play social, goim'es, some of them involving careful* team work, and requiring a deal ol memory, skill and activity. ALL THE WAY FROM CHUN A. Many of them are the matured inventions of generations of tlie-ir kind, like, for example, “Prisoner’s Base,” “Release,” and “Jimmy, Jimmy, N-aiako.” Some few are modern ianIXirtations. Mr. Norman Douglas, in “London -Street -Games,’’ lias 'been at pains to trace the origin of these latter, and in some eases ids inquiries have Jed him very far afield. l ake “Queen ie”. lor instance. That is a “soft” game, usually played by girls, (but -sometimes the hoys will condescend to give it their patronage. One hoy stands on the kerbstone with his* back to the street, and the other hoys call him' “Queenie.” He throws the hall backwards over his shoulder, where the others are standing to catch i,t. As soon as one of them has it they whip the-;;r hands behind their backs, and Queenie has to turn round and guess who- has it.

I f he guesses right lie goes on being “Queenie.” If ho is wrong tlxe hoy who has the- hall becomes “Queenie.” A simple -affair, (but the- game, -says G-. Douglas, has iboen played from time immemorial in China, where it is called “Quinain,” and it probably came to London by way of the docks and Pennyfields.

Amongst- the five hundred-odd street games that -the author has collected and classified a.re many so oddly named as to give rise to -all sorts of conjecture*. “Egg an the Gap”, is, of course, fairly descriptive. But what of “Gut-a-Lump,” “Dead Donkey,” “Three Eggs Rotten,” “Swimming in Blue Waters,” “Wall Barn Gup,” “Swolo,” “Rabbit, in the Hutch,” “Strike Up, Lay Down,” “Dust Holes,” and ‘ ‘Teaser’ ’ ? THE ETERNAL CIGARETTE CLVIW). 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, alii governed by rigid rules that nuiist on no account -be departed from; and to each; its own name. ‘‘lTluwing, ’’ ‘‘Slap-Dab, ’’. ‘‘WaterHells,’’ and “Scaling nip the Ring”, are titles of some of them. Pantomime singin" games are played almost entirely iby girls.. “You can get as many of these songs as- you Jake from the-girds if you Cairo, to ask them,” says Mr. Douglas. “They are far less shy about them than the hoys are.” But. the girls’ games are not so .poetic as are the hoys’; they sing chiefly of work and food, sewing and cleaning. One, -beginning ‘When 1 was a- young girl,” played and sung by -a number of children acting in concert, depicts the life of a typical girl of the working classes- from the cradle, well nigh to the grave. She -goes to school, goes courting, gets married, rocks her baby, and finishes -up as a- grandmother seated knitting by the fireside; each verse having its appropriate action that is never departed from.