Peeps at Many Lands: Turkey — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Peeps at Many Lands: Turkey
John Stuart Mill · en
Kite-flying is popular, and in early spring hundreds of kites may be
seen flying from the terraces over the house-tops. They are shaped like
our own, and are made with bright-coloured paper, with long tails of
paper strips. Little splints of wood or cane are attached to the tail
for the purpose of entangling and capturing other kites. This is done by
manoeuvring them about, letting them drop momentarily or rise
suddenly, so as to swoop over their adversary and capture it. When these
air-ships have boarded, both the fliers pull in the string as rapidly as
possible, and it sometimes happens that the vanquished kite is after all
the victor.
Hop-scotch is as ancient as the hills, and is played in Turkey in much
the same way as with us. So also are marbles and tip-cat, with the same
risks, in the case of tip-cat, to the eyes of beholders as in this
country.
Walnuts enter largely into the composition of boys' games. One of these
consists in rolling them down a sloping board, each boy playing in turn.
The person who hits any of the nuts on the floor appropriates all he can
gather. The game goes on, each player retiring when his stock of walnuts
is exhausted. Another game is that of placing the walnuts in a ring, and
throwing (not rolling) other nuts at them from a distance. All displaced
walnuts belong to the displacer.
Knifey, or _bitchak_, as it is called in Turkey, is popular among girls
as well as boys. They sit in a circle on the village green, and, placing
an open pocket-knife on the back of their hand, throw it up in the air
so that it shall on descending stick in the ground. Knuckle-bones is
allied to the above, and is played with five bones, as with us, and with
much the same variations.
_Pendavola_, or five pebbles, is the Greek name of knuckle-bones, when
played with stones instead of bones. Both the above games date back to
remote antiquity, and exist in some form with every nation.
A practice indulged in by boys and young men is that of bird-catching by
means of nets, snares, or bird-lime twigs.
In autumn, when Nature shows the first hectic flushes of decay, and
birds know that winter will soon be upon them, innumerable flocks
traverse the regions around Constantinople on their way south. Quails
arrive by scores of thousands, and, exhausted with their flight over the
Black Sea, they alight near the mouth of the Bosphorus, and are easily
caught in nets, and served on the tables of even the poorest
inhabitants.