The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 1 of 2): With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing etc.Gomme, Alice Bertha
History
The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 1 of 2): With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing etc.
Gomme, Alice Bertha
Folklore -- Great Britain; Games -- Great Britain
Robinson (_Mid-Yorkshire Glossary_), under “Spell and Nur,” says: “A
game played with a wooden ball and a stick fitted at the striking end
with a club-shaped piece of wood. The ‘spell’ made to receive and spring
the ball for the blow at a touch, is a simple contrivance of wood an
inch or so in breadth and a few inches long. . . . The players, who
usually go in and out by turns each time, after a preliminary series of
tippings of the spell with the stick in one hand, and catches of the
ball with the other, in the process of calculating the momentum
necessary for reach of hand, are also allowed two trial ‘rises’ in a
striking attitude, and distance is reckoned by scores of yards. The long
pliable stick, with a loose club end, used in the game, is called the
‘tribit’ or ‘trivit’ stick. . . . The trevit is, in fact, the trap
itself, and the trevit-stick the stick with which the trap is struck.”
The tribbit-stick is elsewhere called “primstick,” “gelstick,”
“buckstick,” “trippit,” and “trevit.” Atkinson says that “spell” is
O.N., “spill” meaning a play or game, and the probability is that the
game is a lineal descendant from the Ball-play of the Old Danes, or
Northmen, and Icelanders. “Spell and knor” is a corruption of “spell a’
knor,” the play at ball. Nurspel is simply ball-play, therefore which
name, taken in connection with the fact that the game is elsewhere
called “Spell and Knor,” and not “Knor and Spell,” is significant. There
is one day in the year, Shrove Tuesday, when the play is customarily
practised, though not quite exclusively.—Atkinson’s _Cleveland
Glossary_.
Easther (_Almondbury Glossary_) describes it as played with a wooden
ball, a spel, and a pommel. Two may play, or two sides. When a player
goes in he drives the knor for, say, 100 yards, _i.e._, five score, and
he reckons five. Each person has the same number of strokes previously
agreed upon, but generally only one innings. The “spell” is a kind of
stage with three or four feet, to drive it into the ground. On the top
of this stage is a spring made of steel, containing a cup to receive the
“knor,” which is about one or two inches in diameter, and is made of
holly or box. The spring is kept down by a sneck, which is tapped by the
pommel when the knor is intended to be struck. The pommel is thus
formed—the driving part is frequently of ash-root or owler, in shape
like half a sugar-loaf split lengthwise, but only three or four inches
long, and the handle is of ash, wrapped with a wax band where held,
which is in one hand only.
See “Kibel and Nerspel,” “Trap Ball,” “Trippit and Coit.”
Nuts in May
[Music]
—Shropshire (Miss Burne).
I. Here we come gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May,
Here we come gathering nuts in May,
On a fine summer morning.
Whom will you have for nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May?
Whom will you have for nuts in May,
On a fine summer morning?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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