The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland Volume I Part 17

Boggle about the Stacks

A favourite play among young people in the villages, in which one hunts several others (Brockett's _North-Country Words_). The game is alluded to in one of the songs given by Ritson (ii. 3), and Jamieson describes it as a Scottish game.

See "Barley-break."

Boggle-bush

The child's play of finding the hidden person in the company.-Robinson's _Whitby Glossary_. See "Hide and Seek."

Bonnety

This is a boys' game. The players place their bonnets or caps in a pile.

They then join hands and stand in a circle round it. They then pull each other, and twist and wriggle round and round and over it, till one overturns it or knocks a bonnet off it. The player who does so is hoisted on the back of another, and pelted by all the others with their bonnets.-Keith, Nairn (Rev. W. Gregor).

Booman

[Music]

-Norfolk.

Dill doule for Booman, Booman is dead and gone, Left his wife all alone, and all his children.

Where shall we bury him? Carry him to London; By his grandfather's grave grows a green onion.

Dig his grave wide and deep, strow it with flowers; Toll the bell, toll the bell, twenty-four hours.

-Norfolk, 1825-30 (J. Doe).

(_b_) One boy lies down and personates Booman. Other boys form a ring round him, joining hands and alternately raising and lowering them, to imitate bell-pulling, while the girls who play sit down and weep. The boys sing the first verse. The girls seek for daisies or any wild flowers, and join in the singing of the second verse, while the boys raise the prostrate Booman and carry him about. When singing the third verse the boys act digging a grave, and the dead boy is lowered. The girls strew flowers over the body. When finished another boy becomes Booman.

(_c_) This game is clearly dramatic, to imitate a funeral. Mr. Doe writes, "I have seen somewhere [in Norfolk] a tomb with a crest on it-a leek-and the name Beaumont," but it does not seem necessary to thus account for the game.

Boss-out

A game at marbles. Strutt describes it as follows:-"One bowls a marble to any distance that he pleases, which serves as a mark for his antagonist to bowl at, whose business it is to hit the marble first bowled, or lay his own near enough to it for him to span the s.p.a.ce between them and touch both the marbles. In either case he wins. If not, his marble remains where it lay, and becomes a mark for the first player, and so alternately until the game be won."-_Sports_, p. 384.

Boss and Span

The same as "Boss-out." It is mentioned, but not described, in Baker's _Northamptons.h.i.+re Glossary_.

Boys and Girls

[Music]

-_The Dancing Master_, 1728, vol. ii., p. 138.

Boys, boys, come out to play, The moon doth s.h.i.+ne as bright as day; Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a goodwill or don't come at all; Lose your supper and lose your sleep, So come to your playmates in the street.

-_Useful Transactions in Philosophy_, p. 44.

This rhyme is repeated when it is decided to begin any game, as a general call to the players. The above writer says it occurs in a very ancient MS., but does not give any reference to it. Halliwell quotes the four first lines, the first line reading "Boys and girls," instead of "Boys, boys," from a curious ballad written about the year 1720, formerly in the possession of Mr. Crofton Croker (_Nursery Rhymes_).

Chambers also gives this rhyme (_Popular Rhymes_, p. 152).

Branks

A game formerly common at fairs, called also "Hit my Legs and miss my Pegs."-d.i.c.kinson's _c.u.mberland Glossary_.

Bridgeboard

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A game at marbles. The boys have a board a foot long, four inches in depth, and an inch (or so) thick, with squares as in the diagram; any number of holes at the ground edge, numbered irregularly. The board is placed firmly on the ground, and each player bowls at it. He wins the number of marbles denoted by the figure above the opening through which his marble pa.s.ses. If he misses a hole, his marble is lost to the owner of the Bridgeboard.-Earls Heaton (Herbert Hardy). [The owner or keeper of the Bridgeboard presumably pays those boys who succeed in winning marbles.]

See "Nine Holes."

Broken-down Tradesmen

A boys' game, undescribed.-Patterson's _Antrim and Down Glossary_.

Brother Ebenezer

Ebenezer is sent out of the room, and the remainder choose one of themselves. Two children act in concert, it being understood that the last person speaking when Ebenezer goes out of the room is the person to be chosen. The medium left in the room causes the others to think of this person without letting them know that they are not choosing of their own free will. The medium then says, "Brother Ebenezer, come in,"

and asks him in succession, "Was it William, or Jane," &c., mentioning several names before saying the right one, Ebenezer saying "No!" to all until the one is mentioned who last spoke.-Bitterne, Hants (Mrs.

Byford).

Bubble-hole

A child's game, undescribed.-Halliwell's _Dictionary_.

Bubble-justice

The name of a game probably the same as "Nine Holes."-Halliwell's _Dictionary_.

Buck, Buck