My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am _prepared_. I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl my moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the narrow seas. Not only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse with one other disconcerting and exasperating sentence for the admirers and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in little battle any military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions among even the elementary rules of the Battle. You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but--the available heads we have for it, are too small.
If two men play a game, the winner is not considered particularly lucky; but if one wanted only two points to go out and the other wanted a hundred, the latter would be a very lucky man if he won. It is a remarkable fact that luck is the only subject in the world on which we have no recognised authority, although it is a topic of the most universal interest. Strictly speaking, to be lucky simply means to be successful, the word being a derivative of _gelingen_, to succeed. There are a few general principles connected with luck which should be understood by every person who is interested in games of chance. In the first place, luck attaches to persons and not to things. It is useless for an unlucky man to change the seats or the cards, for no matter which he chooses the personal equation of good or bad luck adhering to him for the time being cannot be shaken off. In the second place, all men are lucky in some things, and not in others; and they are lucky or unlucky in those things at certain times and for certain seasons. This element of luck seems to come and go like the swell of the ocean. In the lives of some men the tide of fortune appears to be a long steady flood, without a ripple on the surface. In others it rises and falls in waves of greater or lesser length; while in others it is irregular in the extreme; splashing choppy seas to-day; a storm to-morrow that smashes everything; and then calm enough to make ducks and drakes with the pebbles on the shore.
This game belongs apparently to the ball games used for purposes of divination. Mr. Newell (_Games_, p. 181) describes a similar game to this, in which the player whose name is called drops the ball; he must pick it up as quickly as possible while the rest scatter. He then calls Stand! upon which the players halt, and he flings it at whom he pleases. If he misses his aim, he must place himself in a bent position with his hands against a wall until every player has taken a shot at him. The idea of naming children after the days of the week occurs also in the games of Gipsy, Witch, and Mother, Mother, the Pot boils over. See Ball, Burly Whush, Keppy Ball. Moolie Pudding The game of Deadelie; one has to run with the hands locked and taen the others.--Mactaggart s _Gallovidian Encyclopædia_.
Rover cries out-- A [I] warn ye ance, A warn you twice; A warn ye three times over; A warn ye a t be witty an wise An flee fae Johnny Rover. While the words are being repeated all the players are putting themselves on the alert, and when they are finished they run off in all directions, with Rover in full pursuit. If a player is hard pressed he has the privilege of running to Parley, the place from which the players started, and which in all games is an asylum. If he is caught before he reaches it, he becomes Johnny Rover for the next game. The one first captured becomes Rover.--Keith (Rev. W. Gregor). Jolly Fishermen [Music] --Tean, North Staffs. (Miss Burne).
In Wakefield the set of pot checks, which represents five hucklebones, now consists of four checks and a ball about the size of a large marble. The checks are something like dice, but only two opposite sides are plain, the other four being fluted. The table played on is generally a doorstep, and it is made ready by drawing a ring upon it with anything handy which will make a mark. There are twelve figures or movements to be gone through as follows. Some have special names, but I do not learn that all have. 1. The player, taking the checks and ball in the right hand, throws down the checks, keeping the ball in the hand. If any check fall outside the ring the player is down. There is skill needed in the throwing of the checks in this and the following movements, so that they may be conveniently placed for taking up in the proper order. The checks being scattered, the player throws up the ball, takes up one check, and catches the ball as it comes down, or, as it is sometimes played, after it has bounced once from the step.