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CAT-GALLOWS—CAT I' THE HOLE 63
the significance of these string puzzles among savage peoples in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., ix. 26.
Cat-gallows
A child's game, consisting of jumping over a stick placed at right angles to two others fixed in the ground.—Halliwell's Dictionary.
(b) In Ross and Stead's Holderness Glossary this is called " Cat-gallas," and is described as three sticks placed in the form of a gallows for boys to jump over. So called in consequence of being of sufficient height to hang cats from. Also mentioned in Peacock's Manley and Corringham Glossary and Elworthy's West Somerset Words, Brogden's Provincial Words, Lines., Dickinson's Cumberland Glossary, Atkinson's Cleveland Glossary, Brockett's North Country Words, Evans' Leicestershire Glossary, Baker's Northants Glossary, and Darlington's South Cheshire Glossary. On one of the stalls in Worcester Cathedral, figured in Wright's A rchceo logical Essays, ii. 117, is a carving which represents three rats busily engaged in hanging a cat on a gallows of this kind.
Cat i' the Hole
A game well known in Fife, and perhaps in other counties. If seven boys are to play, six holes are made at certain distances. Each of the six stands at a hole, with a short stick in his hand; the seventh stands at a certain distance holding a ball. When he gives the word, or makes the sign agreed upon, all the six change holes, each running to his neighbour's hole, and putting his stick in the hole which he has newly seized. In making this change, the boy who has the ball tries to put it into an empty hole. If he succeeds in this, the boy who had not his stick (for the stick is the Cat) in the hole to which he had run is put out, and must take the ball. There is often a very keen contest whether the one shall get his stick, or the other the ball, or Cat, first put into the hole. When the Cat is in the hole, it is against the laws of the game to put the ball into it.—Jamieson.
(b) Kelly, in his Scottish Proverbs, p. 325, says, " 'Tine cat, |
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