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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	256                                  JACK'S ALIVE to the Hanbury version. The first lines run—Choose your lover; Open the gates; Go to church, love; Kneel down, love; Say your prayers, love; Put on the ring; Stand up, love; In the ring, love; Kiss together, love. (d) The words of all the versions are sufficiently similar to analyse without a special form. The game appears to be purely a love and marriage game, and has probably had its origin in a ballad, and this idea is strengthened by the fact that only one version (London) has the marriage formula sung at the end, and this is probably an arbitrary addition. The lover is represented as lonely and disconsolate, and the remedy suggested is to choose a sweetheart. The marriage ceremony is of the simplest description—the clasping of hands and the kissing within the circle probably implying the betrothal at a spot sacred to such functions, similar to the Standing Stones of Stenness. Whatever may have been the original intention of these stones, they came in more recent times to be the resort of lovers, who joined their right hands through the hole in the altar stones in the belief that this ceremony would add additional solemnity to the betrothal. Miss Gordon Cumming, in her Tour in the Hebrides, mentions the fact of the marriage ceremony being of the simplest—a man and woman standing facing each other and clasping hands over a particular stone. Walking arm-in-arm is a sign in Dorsetshire that a couple are married. The mention of the " roast beef and plum pudding " for dinner has probably had its origin in the wedding dinner or breakfast, and the inviting of friends to assemble for the wedding dinner. The word "Isabella" may have been originally something quite different from the name of a girl. I am inclined to think the word was not the name of a person at all; possibly it was some­thing addressed to a particular person in words the sense of which are now lost, and the nearest idea to it was this name. The same thing may also apply to the word "farewell," and hence the incongruity of the first few lines in nearly all versions. Jack's Alive. A number of people sit in a row, or on chairs round a