Miscellaneous Puerile Amusements
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NURSERY GAMES
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Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales
I went to the sea,
And saw twentee
Geese all in a row:
My glove I would give
Full of gold, if my wife
Was as white as those.
These lines are to be repeated rapidly and correctly, inserting the word
cother after every word, under pain of a forfeit.
It's time, I believe,
For us to get leave:
The little dog says
It isn't, it is; it 'tisnt, it is, &c.
Said by a schoolboy, who places his book between his knees. His two
forefingers are then placed together, and the breadth of each is
measured alternately along the length of the book. The time to get leave
(to be dismissed) is supposed to have arrived or not according as one
finger or the other fills up the last space.
A duck and a drake,
And a white penny cake.
It's time to go home,
It isn't, it is, &c.
So going on with the fingers one over the other along the edge of a book
or desk, till the last finger determines the question.
Put your finger in foxy's hole,
Foxy is not at home:
Foxy is at the back door,
Picking of a bone.
Holding the fist in such a way that if a child puts its finger in, you
can secure it, still leaving the hole at top open.
Jack's alive and in very good health,
If he dies in your hand you must look to yourself.
Played with a stick, one end burnt red-hot: it is passed round a circle
from one to the other, the one who passes it saying this, and the one
whose hand it goes out in paying a forfeit.