The sport lies in the bustle in consequence of every one s endeavouring to avoid the misfortune of being the unhappy individual who is left without a seat. The principal actor often slily says, The king s _not_ come, when, of course the company ought to keep their seats; but from their anxious expectation of the usual summons, they generally start up, which affords a great deal of merriment.--Brand s _Pop. Antiq._, ii. 409. (_b_) Dr. Jamieson says this is a game well-known in Lothian and in the South of Scotland. Sir Walter Scott, in _Rob Roy_, iii. 153, says, Here auld ordering and counter-ordering--but patience! patience!--We may ae day play at _Change seats, the king s coming_.
Hamilton. Philosophy of Whist, by Dr. W. Pole. * Practical Guide to Whist, by Fisher Ames. x Short-Suit Whist, by Val. W. Starnes. * Short Whist, by James Clay. * Theory of Whist, by Dr.
The oe- | | ligature is transcribed as [oe]. | | | | More Transcriber s Notes may be found at the end of this text. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ A DICTIONARY OF BRITISH FOLK-LORE EDITED BY G. LAURENCE GOMME, ESQ., F.S.A. PRESIDENT OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY, ETC. _PART I._ TRADITIONAL GAMES _BY THE SAME EDITOR.
1. If a player leads when it is the turn of an adversary to lead, and the error is discovered before all have played to such lead, a suit may be called from him or from his partner, as the case may be, the first time thereafter it is the right of either of them to lead. The penalty can be enforced only by the adversary on the right of the one from whom a lead can lawfully be called, and the right thereto is lost unless such adversary calls the suit he desires led before the first trick won by the offender or his partner subsequent to the offence is turned and quitted. SEC. 2. If a player leads when it is his partnerβs turn and the error is discovered before all have played to such lead, a suit may at once be called from the proper leader by his right-hand adversary. Until the penalty has been exacted, waived or forfeited, the proper leader must not lead; should he so lead, the card led by him is liable to be called. SEC. 3. If a player when called on to lead a suit has none of it, he may lead as he pleases.
| -- | -- | | 3.|We are going to L. B. | -- | -- | | 4.| -- |Over L. B. we go. | -- | | 5.|L. B.
He must also double the pool, and add to it a revoke forfeit of four red counters. For instance: A bids eight tricks, and his adversaries detect and claim a revoke. As he is supposed to have lost his bid, and one trick more, he may be said to have bid eight, and taken only seven; losing 23 white counters to each of his adversaries, doubling the pool, and then paying a forfeit of four red counters. In some places the forfeit is omitted, and in others it takes the place of doubling the pool. It is not usual to play the hand out after a revoke is claimed and proved. If an adversary of the single player revokes, he and his partners must each pay the caller just as if he had been successful, and must also pay him for three over-tricks as forfeit, provided his bid was not more than nine tricks; for the bid and the over-tricks together must not exceed thirteen tricks. In addition to this, the individual player in fault must pay four red counters as forfeit to the pool. In some places he is made to double the pool; but this is manifestly unfair, as he could not win the amount in the pool in any case, and therefore should not lose it. In a Misère Partout, the revoking player pays five red counters to each adversary, and deposits a forfeit of four red counters in the pool. The hands are immediately thrown up if the revoke is claimed and proved.
The fifteen is duplicated, but there is no pair. [Illustration: π© π π π¦ ] If there are two duplicates of either card, the combination will always be worth 12 points; 6 for the three fifteens, and 6 more for the pair royal. [Illustration: πΉ π π πΆ ] If the duplicates are of two different cards, the combination is still worth 12, because four different fifteens can be formed by combining each Nine with each Six separately, and there are two single pairs. [Illustration: π π πΆ π π¦ πΉ π© π π π¦ ] The same is true of any combinations of two-card fifteens in which all five cards are of value; they are both of the same pegging value, 20 points. If there are three duplicates of one card in the original fifteen, the four separate fifteens will be worth 8, and the double pair royal 12. If there are two duplicates of one card, and one of the other, six separate fifteens can be formed by combining each Nine with each Six, pegging 12; and the pair royal of one card with the single pair of the other will add 8 more. _=Three-card Fifteens=_ may be formed in fifteen different ways, ranging from 10 4 A, to 5 5 5. If you hold any of these combinations, and have a fourth card which is a duplicate of any of the three forming the fifteen, the value of the combination will depend on how many cards you can replace with the duplicate card. [Illustration: πΎ π π π‘ ] If you have an extra tenth card, you can replace the other tenth card once only, and the total value of the combination is therefore 6 points, which is expressed by the formula; βFifteen-two, fifteen-four, and a pair.β [Illustration: π π³ π π£ ] If your combination was 9 3 3, and you had another 9, the same thing would be true; but if your duplicate is a Three, there are two cards which can be replaced, and the combination is therefore worth 12; 6 for the three fifteens, and 6 more for the pair royal.
This was not like any sort of warfare. In real life cavalry cannot pick out and kill its equivalent in cavalry while that equivalent is closely supported by other cavalry or infantry; a handful of troopers cannot gallop past well and abundantly manned guns in action, cut down the gunners and interrupt the fire. And yet for a time we found it a little difficult to frame simple rules to meet these two bad cases and prevent such scandalous possibilities. We did at last contrive to do so; we invented what we call the melee, and our revised rules in the event of a melee will be found set out upon a later page. They do really permit something like an actual result to hand-to-hand encounters. They abolish Horatius Cocles. [Illustration: The war game in the open air] [Illustration: Fig. 1--Battle of Hook s Farm. General View of the Battlefield and Red Army] We also found difficulties about the capturing of guns. At first we had merely provided that a gun was captured when it was out of action and four men of the opposite force were within six inches of it, but we found a number of cases for which this rule was too vague.
| -- | -- | -- | |32.|Give him a pipe of | -- | -- | | |tobacco to smoke. | | | |33.|Suppose the pipe | -- | -- | | |should fall and break.| | | |34.|We ll give him a bag | -- | -- | | |of nuts to crack. | | | |35.|Suppose the nuts were | -- | -- | | |rotten and bad. | | | |36.| -- |Set a dog to bark all | -- | | | |night.
Suppose that in the foregoing example, Blackβs next throw is five-deuce. He cannot enter the man on the five-point, because it is covered by the enemy: so he must enter upon the deuce point, which is not covered, and must move some other man five points for the throw upon the other die. If both the five and deuce points were covered, Black could not enter on either of them, and as he cannot play until the man on the bar is entered, the throw would be lost, and he would have to wait until his adversary threw and moved in his turn. If two men are upon the bar, both must be entered before any man can be moved. A man may enter and hit a blot at the same time. If a player could get his men round the board without any of them being hit, seventy-seven points on the dice thrown would bring them all home; but as every man hit has to start all over again from his adversaryβs home table, it may take a great many throws to get all the men home. For this reason it is obvious that each player should leave as few blots as possible, in order to save his men from being hit; and at the same time he should strive to cover as many points as possible, in order to prevent his adversary from moving round the board freely. It is still more important to cover points in the home table, so that when an adverse man is hit he will have fewer points upon which to enter. It is, of course, unnecessary to say that one can always enter or play on points covered by his own men. [Illustration: +-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+ | |β|β|β|β|β|| | | | | | | | |β|β|β|β|β|| | | | | | | | | | |β| |β|| | | | | | | | | | | | | || | | | | | | |β| | | | | || | | | | | | |β || | |β| | | | | || | | | | | | |β| | | | | || | | | | | | |β| | |β|β| || | | | | | | |β|β|β|β|β| || | | | | | | |β|β|β|β|β| || | | | | |β| +-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+ ] _=Throwing Off.
Hecklebirnie A play among children in Aberdeenshire. Thirty or forty children in two rows, joining opposite hands, strike smartly with their hands thus joined on the head or shoulders of their companion as he runs the gauntlet through them. This is called passing through the mires of Hecklebirnie. --Jamieson. The editors of Jamieson append a lengthy note connecting the name of this game with the northern belief that the wicked were condemned to suffer eternal punishment in Hecla, the volcanic mountain in Iceland. See Namers and Guessers. Hen and Chicken Chickery, chickery, cranny crow, I went to the well to wash my toe, When I got back a chicken was dead. This verse is said by the Hen to her Chickens, after which they all go with the Hen to search for the dead Chicken. On their way they meet the Fox. The following dialogue between the Fox and Hen ensues, the Hen beginning:-- What are you doing? Picking up sticks.
In towns, porters and other labourers play it, at their leisure hours, on the flat pavement, tracing the figure with chalk. It is also a domestic game; and the figure is to be found on the back of some draught-boards. But to compare _morris_ with that game, or with chess, seems absurd; as it has a very distant resemblance, if any at all, to either, in the lines, or in the rules of playing. On the ground, the men are pebbles, broken tiles, shells, or potsherds; on a table, the same as are used at draughts or backgammon. In Nares it is said to be the same as nine-holes. With us it is certainly different. Cope (_Hampshire Glossary_) says that Nine Men s Morrice is a game played with counters. He does not describe it further. Atkinson (_Glossary of Cleveland Dialect_) says under Merls, the game of Merelles, or Nine Men s Morris. Toone (_Etymological Dictionary_) describes it as a game played on the green sward, holes being cut thereon, into which stones were placed by the players.
If B throws down his cards he loses all claim to what he has already staked in the pool, four blues and a red, besides his straddle and ante. Let us suppose he drops out, and that D just calls A, by putting up two blues only, making the amount he has in the pool exactly equal to Aβs, eight blues and a red, besides the antes. This prevents A from going any further, because it is not his turn to say anything. He is not asked to meet any oneβs raise, nor to make any bet himself, but simply to show his hand, in order to see whether or not it is better than Dβs. _=SHOWING HANDS.=_ It is the general usage that the hand _=called=_ must be shown first. In this case Aβs hand is called, for D was the one who called a halt on A in the betting, and stopped him from going any further. The strict laws of the game require that both hands must be shown, and if there are more than two in the final call, all must be shown to the table. The excuse generally made for not showing the losing hand is that the man with the worse hand paid to see the better hand; but it must not be forgotten that the man with the better hand has paid exactly the same amount, and is equally entitled to see the worse hand. There is an excellent rule in some clubs that a player refusing to show his hand in a call shall refund the amount of the antes to all the other players, or pay all the antes in the next jack pot.