What’s there? Cheese and bread, and a mouldy halfpenny! Where’s my share? I put it on the shelf, and the cat got it. Where’s the cat? She’s run nine miles through the wood. Where’s the wood? T’ fire burnt it. Where’s the fire? T’ waters sleekt (extinguished) it. Where’s the water? T’ oxen drank it. Where’s the oxen? T’ butcher killed ’em. Where’s the butcher? Upon the church tops cracking nuts, and you may go and eat the shells; and them as speaks first shall have nine nips, nine scratches, and nine boxes over the lug! Every one then endeavours to refrain from speaking in spite of mutual nudges and grimaces, and he who first allows a word to escape is punished by the others in the various methods adopted by schoolboys. In some places the game is played differently. The children pile their fists in the manner described above; then one, or sometimes all of them, sing: I’ve built my house, I’ve built my wall; I don’t care where my chimneys fall! The merriment consists in the bustle and confusion occasioned by the rapid withdrawal of the hands (Halliwell’s _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 225). Compare Burne’s _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 529. Northall (_Folk Rhymes_, p. 418) gives the following rhymes as said in Warwickshire while the fists are being piled on one another:— Here’s one hammer on the block, My men, my men; There’s one hammer, &c., my man John. Dibble the can, blow bellows, blow, Fire away, lads, for an hour or so. See “Dish-a-loof,” “Sacks.” Dumps A game at marbles or taw, played with holes scooped in the ground (Roxburgh, Jamieson). Grose gives _dump_ as signifying “a deep hole of water” (_Provincial Glossary_). Dust-point A game in which boys placed their points in a heap, and threw at them with a stone. Weber and Nares give wrong explanations. It is alluded to in Cotton’s Works, 1734, p. 184. I’ll venter on their heads my brindled cow, With any boy at dust-point they shall play. —Peacham’s _Thalia’s Banquet_, 1620. Nares (_Glossary_) suggests that this game and blow-point resembled the game of Push-pin. See also Halliwell’s _Dictionary_. Eller Tree A number of young men and women stand in a line, a tall girl at one end of the line representing the tree. They then begin to wrap round her, saying, “The old eller tree grows thicker and thicker.” When they have all got round her (the tree), they jump all together, calling out, “A bunch of rags, a bunch of rags,” and try to tread on each other’s toes.—Sheffield, Yorks (S. O. Addy).