--Brand, ii. 411; Hunter s _Hallamshire Glossary_. (_b_) This game is played in London with chestnuts, and is called Conquers. In Cornwall it is known as Cock-haw. The boys give the name of Victor-nut to the fruit of the common hazel, and play it to the words: Cockhaw! First blaw! Up hat! Down cap! Victor! The nut that cracks another is called a Cock-battler (_Folk-lore Journal_, v. 61). Halliwell describes this game differently. He says it consists in pitching at a row of nuts piled up in heaps of four, three at the bottom and one at the top of each heap. The nut used for the pitching is called the Cob. All the nuts knocked down are the property of the pitcher.
| -- |If the cock should | -- | | | |meet a hen. | | |41.| -- | -- |How many pounds will | | | | |set him free? | |42.| -- | -- |Three hundred pounds | | | | |will set him free. | |43.| -- | -- |The half of that I | | | | |have not got. | |44.| -- | -- |Then off to prison he | | | | |must go. | |45.| -- | -- | -- | |46.
--Lowsley s _Berkshire Glossary_. Long Terrace Every player chooses a partner. The couples stand immediately in front of each other, forming a long line, one remaining outside of the line on the right-hand side, who is called the Clapper. The object of the game is for the last couple to reach the top of the line, each running on different sides, and keeping to the side on which they are standing. The object of the Clapper is to hit the one running on the right side of the line, which, if he succeeds in doing, makes him the Clapper, and the Clapper takes his place. [The next _last_ couple would then presumably try and reach the top.]--East Kirkby, Lincs. (Miss K. Maughan). A similar game to this is played at Sporle, Norfolk (Miss Matthews).
1889. Holloway s _Dictionary_, ed. 1838. Strutt s _Sports and Pastimes_, ed. 1831. Brand s _Popular Antiquities_, ed. 1875. Nares _Glossary_, ed. 1872. Grose s _Dictionary_, 1823.
Dice are probably the oldest gambling instruments in the world. Chatto thinks that man acquired the passion for gambling as soon as he could distinguish odd from even, or a short straw from a shorter. Simple gambling instruments were probably very early articles of manufacture, and Chatto says that it is not unlikely that after a simple dinner of mutton some enterprising gamester may have taken the small bones from between the shank and the foot, and after burning spots in them to distinguish one from the other, put them into _a_ cow’s horn and shaken them up, afterward rolling them upon the ground. From some such beginning Astragali was developed, a game which Dr. Thomas Hyde thinks was known at the time of the Deluge. Later on, other instruments were used in connection with dice, and so the earliest forms of Backgammon were developed. Dice are still the favourite implements for deciding any matters of pure chance, such as raffling off a horse or a gold watch; but the rules governing such lotteries are but imperfectly understood by people in general. There are also a number of smaller matters, such as the payment for refreshments or cigars, which are settled by thousands of persons every day, simply by throwing dice. The various methods of throwing, and the rules governing all such games are as follows:-- _=THE DICE.=_ Although dice may be of any size, the standard pattern are half an inch square, of ivory or bone, with black spots one tenth of an inch in diameter.
Any pins knocked down through the dead wood remaining on the alley cannot be placed to the credit of the player. The maximum is 10. FIVE BACK. [Illustration: O O O O . . O . . . ] The pins are set as shown in the diagram. Three balls (not exceeding 6 inches in size) are bowled in each inning.