What I said about paving-stones reminds me of MARBLES. We used to play
them in the winter, on the pavement. But marlies are going down in the
world, that’s certain. It’s a good while since I played, but I still
remember the names of a few kinds--Toms, and Alleys, and Glarnies, and
Miggies; and Forty-eighter and Twenty-fourer and Twelver and Sixer
and Fourer and Three-er. You hardly ever hear of a Forty-eighter
nowadays. The smaller stone marbles were called Tich; those you got
out of lemonade bottles were Glass-eye; they also had names, which
I’ve forgotten, according to the different coloured marks. We used to
play at NOCKS (that is, KNUCKS: because your knuckles had to touch
the ground), and MARBLE-BOARD, and SKITTLES, and GLASGOW, and THREE
HOLES, and NIXY’S IN THE HOLE: I TAKE, and GUTTER MARBLES, and ROW
MARBLES, and UP THE ALLEY, and SPICK AND SPAN, and DOB ’EM, and TIP,
and FOUR HOLES, and NEAREST THE WALL, and PICKING THE PLUMS, and
GOING UP, and BOWLING IN THE HOLE and HIT IT LEAVE IT and HIT IT HAVE
IT and THROWINGS OUT and STAYS and HITS AND SPANS and FIVE TEN and
PICKING NUMBERS and BAGATELLE and IN THE RING and PITCHING and FOLLOW
ON and KILLING and PORKY and THROW THE FARTHEST and SOME OR NONE and
BRIDGE-BOARD. BRIDGE-BOARD was played with a diagram looking like a
row of railway arches; and I might explain the game if I could draw
diagrams, which I can’t. In BOUNCE EYE each player gave a certain
number of marbles which were pooled in a ring. Then one of them held
a marble to his eye and dropped it among them; if any others were
knocked out of the ring, he kept them; if none, his own marble went
into the pool. There used also to be games that you played with marbles
in a flat iron ring--the rings cost 2d. if you bought them, but you
generally got them off the barges for nothing--games like RINGUMS and
CHIPPING OUT OF THE RING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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