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DUCK FRIAR—DUCKS AND DRAKES |
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(b) A number of little girls join hands and form a ring. They all jump round and sing the verses. The game ends by the girls following one of their number in a string, all quacking like ducks.—Northamptonshire.
(c) Halliwell does not include it among his games, but simply as a nursery paradox. The tune given is that to which I as a child was taught to sing the verses as a song. We did not know it as a game. The " Quack, quack!" was repeated as another line to the notes of the last bar given, the notes gradually dying away (A. B. Gomme).
Duck Friar
The game of " Leap-frog."—Apollo SJiroving, 1627, p. 83.
Ducks and Drakes
A pastime in which flat stones or slates are thrown upon the surface of a piece of water, so that they may dip and emerge several times without sinking (Brockett's North Country Words). " Neither cross and pile nor ducks and drakes are quite so ancient as hand dandy " (Arbuthnot and Pope, quoted in Todd's Johnson).
HaUiwell gives the words used in the game both formerly and at the present day. If the stone emerges only once it is a duck, and increasing in the following order:—
2. A duck and a drake,
3. And a halfpenny cake,
4. And a penny to pay the old baker,
5. A hop and a scotch is another notch,
6. Slitherum, slatherum, take her.
—H alii well's Dictionary.
Hen-pen, Duck and mallard, Amen. —Somersetshire (Hollovvay's Did. of Provincialisms).
A duck and a drake And a white penny cake. . —Hampshire (Holloway's Diet, of Provi?icialisms). |
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