William Carleton describes this game as follows:—“One of the boys gets a wig upon himself, goes out on the floor, places the boys in a row, calls on his man Jack, and says to each, ‘What will you be?’ One answers, ‘I’ll be Black Cap,’ another, ‘Red Cap,’ and so on. He then says, ‘The priest of the parish has lost his considering-cap. Some says this, and some says that, but I say my man Jack.’ Man Jack then, to put it off himself, says, ‘Is it me, sir?’ ‘Yes you, sir.’ ‘You lie, sir.’ ‘Who then, sir?’ ‘Black Cap.’ If Black Cap then doesn’t say, ‘Is it me, sir?’ before the priest has time to call him he must put his hand on his ham and get a pelt of the brogue. A boy must be supple with the tongue in it.”—_Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, p. 106 (Tegg’s reprint). This game is no doubt the original form of the game imperfectly played under the name of “King Plaster Palacey” (see _ante_, i. 301). Prisoner’s Base or Bars The game of “The Country Base” is mentioned by Shakespeare in “Cymbeline”— “He, with two striplings (lads more like to run The country base, than to commit such slaughter), Made good the passage.”—Act v., sc. 3. Also in the tragedy of Hoffman, 1632— “I’ll run a little course At _base_, or barley-brake.” Again, in the Antipodes, 1638— “My men can runne at _base_.” Also, in the thirtieth song of Drayton’s “Polyolbion”— “At hood-wink, barley-brake, at tick, or _prison-base_.” Again, in Spenser’s “Faerie Queen,” v. 8— “So ran they all as they had been at _bace_.”