The bells shall ring and we shall sing, And all clap hands together (round the ring). Up the lane and down, It’s slippery as a glass, If we go to Mrs. —— We’ll find a nice young lass. Mary with the rosy cheeks, Catch her if you can; And if you cannot catch her, We’ll tell you her young man. —Hanging Heaton (Herbert Hardy). A ring is formed by the children joining hands, one child in the centre. The first verse is sang. Two children from the ring go to the one in the centre and _ask_ her who is her love, or as they say here [Yorks.], “who she goes with;” after that the rest is sung. See “All the Boys.” Merrils See “Nine Men’s Morris.” Merritot, or the Swing This sport, which is sometimes called “Shuggy-shew” in the North of England, is described as follows by Gay:— “On two near elms the slackened cord I hung, Now high, now low, my Blouzalinda swung.” So Rogers, in the _Pleasures of Memory_, l. 77:— “Soar’d in the swing, half pleas’d and half afraid, Through sister elms that wav’d their summer shade.” Speght, in his _Glossary_, says, “‘Meritot,’ a sport used by children by swinging themselves in bell-ropes, or such like, till they are giddy.” In _Mercurialis de Arte Gymnastica_, p. 216, there is an engraving of this exercise. Halliwell quotes from a MS. _Yorkshire Glossary_, as follows:—“‘Merrytrotter,’ a rope fastened at each end to a beam or branch of a tree, making a curve at the bottom near the floor or ground in which a child can sit, and holding fast by each side of the rope, is swung backwards and forwards.” Baker (_Northamptonshire Glossary_) calls “Merrytotter” the game of “See-saw,” and notes that the antiquity of the game is shown by its insertion in Pynson, “Myry totir, child’s game, oscillum.” Chaucer probably alludes to it in the following lines of the _Miller’s Tale_— “What eileth you? some gay girle (God it wote) Hath brought you thus on the merry tote.” Merry-ma-tansa [Music] —Biggar (Wm. Ballantyne). I. Here we go round by jingo-ring, Jingo-ring, and jingo-ring, Here we go round by jingo-ring, About the merry-ma-tansa. Come name the lad you like the best, Like the best, like the best, Come name the lad you like the best, About the merry-ma-tansa. Guess ye wha’s the young gudeman, The young gudeman, the young gudeman, Come guess ye wha’s the young gudeman About the merry-ma-tansa. Honey’s sweet and so is he, So is he, so is he, Honey’s sweet and so is he, About the merry-ma-tansa. [Or— Crab-apples are sour and so is he, So is he, so is he, Crab-apples are sour and so is he, About the merry-ma-tansa.]