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FOX IN THE FOLD |
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The vacant holes behind are for the Geese and Fox to move in. The game is for the Geese to shut up the Fox so that he cannot move. All the pieces can be moved from one spot to another in the direction of the lines, but cannot pass over two holes at once. The Geese are not permitted to take the Fox. The Fox's business is to take all, or as many of the Geese as will prevent him from being blockaded. The Fox can take the Geese whenever there is a vacant space behind them, which he passes to, then occupies.
This game has been very popular among schoolboys in all ages. Mr. Micklethwaite, in a paper on the Indoor Games of School Boys in the Middle Ages (Arch.Journ. xlix. 322), gives instances of finding figures of this game cut "in the cloister benches of Gloucester Cathedral and elsewhere, and there are several on the twelfth century tomb at Salisbury, miscalled Lord Stour-ton's," and also at Norwich Castle. For the date of these boards, Mr. Micklethwaite says for the last three centuries and a halt cloisters everywhere in England have been open passages, and there have generally been schoolboys about. It is therefore not unlikely that they should have left behind them such traces as these play-boards. But if they are of later date they would not be found to be distributed in monastic cloisters with respect to the monastic arrangement, and we do find them so. Strutt describes the game (Sports, p. 319).
See " Nine Men's Morris," " Noughts and Crosses."
Fox in the Fold
" The Tod (Fox) i' the Faul (Fold)/' This game is commonly played by boys. Any number of boys join hands and stand in a circle to form the Faul. The boy that represents the Tod is placed within the circle. His aim is to escape. To effect this he rushes with all his force, increased by a run, against the joint hands of any two of the players. If the rush does not unloose the grasp, he hangs on the two arms with all his weight, pressing and wriggling. If he fails he makes a rush at another two, always selecting those players he thinks weakest. When he does break through he rushes off at the top of his speed, with all the players in full cry, till he is caught and |
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