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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	MERRITOT—MERRY-MA-TANSA	369
	Merritot, or the Swing This sport, which is sometimes called " Shuggy-shew" in the North of England, is described as follows by Gay:— " On two near elms the slackened cord I hung, Now high, now low, my Blouzalinda swung." So Rogers, in the Pleasures of Memory, 1. jj :— " Soar'd in the swing, half pleas'd and half afraid, Through sister elms that wav'd their summer shade." Speght, in his Glossary, says, "' Meritot,' a sport used by children by swinging themselves in bell-ropes, or such like, till they are giddy." In Mercurialis de Arte Gymnastica, p. 216, there is an engraving of this exercise. H alii well quotes from a MS. Yorkshire Glossary, as follows:—"' Merry trotter,' a rope fastened at each end to a beam or branch of a tree, making a curve at the bottom near the floor or ground in which a child can sit, and holding fast by each side of the rope, is swung backwards and for­wards." Baker (Northamptonshire Glossary) calls " Merrytotter" the game of u See-saw," and notes that the antiquity of the game is shown by its insertion in Pynson, " Myry totir, child's game, oscillum." Chaucer probably alludes to it in the following lines of the Miller's Tale— " What eileth you ? some gay girle (God it wote) Hath brought you thus on the merry tote."
	I. Here we go round by jingo-ring, Jingo-ring, and jingo-ring, Here we go round by jingo-ring, About the merry-ma-tansa. VOL. I.                                                                                 2 A