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DROP HANDKERCHIEF |
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which Dun meant a dun horse, supposed to be stuck in the mire, and sometimes represented by one of the persons who played.
Gifford (Ben Jonsoji, vol. vii. p. 283), who remembered having played at the game (doubtless in his native county, Devonshire), thus describes it:—" A log of wood is brought into the midst of the room: this is Dun (the cart horse), and a cry is raised that he is stuck in the mire. Two of the company advance, either with or without ropes, to draw him out. After repeated attempts they find themselves unable to do it, and call for more assistance. The game continues till all the company take part in it, when Dun is extricated of course; and the merriment arises from the awkward and affected efforts of the rustics to lift the log, and sundry arch contrivances to let the ends of it fall on one another's toes."
Drop Handkerchief
This is a game similar to Cat and Mouse, but takes its name from the use of the handkerchief to start the pursuit. Various rhyming formulae are used in some places. In Monton, Lancashire (Miss Dendy), no rhyme is used.
The children stand in a ring. One runs round with a handkerchief and drops it; the child behind whom it is dropped chases the dropper, the one who gets home first takes the vacant place, the other drops the handkerchief again.
In Shropshire the two players pursue one another in and out of the ring, running under the uplifted hands of the players who compose it: the pursuer carefully keeping on the track of the pursued (Burne's Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 512). The Dorsetshire variant is accompanied by a rhyme: I wrote a letter to my love; I carried water in my glove; And by the way I dropped it— I dropped it, I dropped it, I dropped it, &c. This is repeated until the handkerchief is stealthily dropped immediately behind one of the players, who should be on the alert to follow as quickly as possible the one who has dropped it, who at once increases her speed and endeavours to take the |
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