The Traditional Children's Games of England Scotland
& Ireland In Dictionary Form - Volume 1

With Tunes(sheet music), Singing-rhymes(lyrics), Methods Of Playing with diagrams and illustrations.

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	FIVESTONES
	except that the stones not caught on the back of the hand have to be arranged in twos, threes, and fours respectively by the hand on which the caught stones are lying meanwhile, and then each lot has to be picked up altogether. If the number that fall when the stones are first thrown up won't allow of this, the player has to drop the required number (but no more) from his hand. In Magic the play is just the same as in One-ers, except that instead of only throwing up a single stone and catching it as the others are in turn picked up, the whole number, except those remaining to be picked up, are thrown and caught. In Four Squares, four of the stones are arranged in a square, each of them is then picked up, whilst the remaining stone is flung upwards and caught; the one picked up is then tossed up, and the one originally tossed up is put down in the place of the other, which is caught as it descends, and the process repeated " all round the square." Trotting Donkeys is similarly played, except that the four stones are arranged in a line—not in a square—and I believe there is some other slight difference, but I forget what. Fly-catchers is played like One-ers, except that the stone thrown into the air while the others are being picked up, is not simply caught by being allowed to fall into the hand, but by an outward movement of the hand is pounced on, hawk-fashion, from above. Magic Fly­catchers is played in precisely the same way, except that as in simple Magic, not one stone, but all are thrown up and caught—that is, if there are four on the ground one only is thrown up for the first, two for the second, three for the third, and so on until they are all picked up. This is, of course, the most difficult part of all, and, in fact, only experts were expected to do it. Every failure means " out," and then your opponent has his turn. The winner is the one who gets through first. Such is the game as I remember it, but I have an uneasy suspicion that I have missed something out. I seem to re­member one trick in which all the stones on the ground had to be picked up at once where they lay—scrambled up so to speak. Or it may be (and, in fact, I think it was) that sometimes, to add to the difficulty of the game, we picked up the groups of two, three, and four in Two-ers, Three-ers, and Four-ers in