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FORFEITS |
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sometimes a kick en the shins would lead the two men concerned to abandon the game until they had decided which was the better pugilist. There do not appear to have been any rules for the regulation of the game; and the art of football playing in the olden time seems to have been to reach the goal. When once the goal was reached, the victory was celebrated by loud hurrahs and the firing of guns, and was not disturbed until the following Christmas Day. Victory on Christmas Day, added the old man, was so highly esteemed by the whole countryside, that a Bro or Blaenau would as soon lose a cow from his cow-house as the football from his portion of the parish."
(b) In Gomme's Village Community, pp. 241-44, the position of football games as elements in the traditions of race is discussed, and their relationship to a still earlier form of tribal games, where the element of clan feuds is more decidedly preserved, is pointed out.
Forfeits
Forfeits are incurred in those games in which penalties are exacted from players for non-compliance with the rules of the game; "Buff," "Contrary," "Crosspurposes," "Fire, Air, and Water," "Follow my Gable," "Genteel Lady," "Jack's Alive," "Old Soldier," "Twelve Days of Christmas," "Turn the Trencher," " Wadds," and others. These games are described under their several titles, and the formula for forfeits is always the same. Small articles belonging to the players must be given by. them every time a forfeit is incurred, and these must be redeemed at. the close of the game., They are " cried " in the following manner:—One of the players sits on a chair having the forfeits in her lap. A child kneels on the ground and buries his face in his hands on the lap of the person who holds the forfeits. The " crier " then takes up indiscriminately one of the forfeits, and holding it up in the sight of all those who have been playing the games (without the kneeling child seeing it), says—
Here's a very pretty thing and a very pretty thing, And what shall be done to [or, by] the owner of this very pretty thing ? |
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