Bairn Sangs - Children's Rhymes and Games

  It's a constantly repeated battle cry of those who do not realise that the world turns and changes that children don't play enough outside any more and that the old games and past-times were so much better than any electronic pollution which young people feed themselves these days.

   But we can leave the 'old days were better days' arguments aside and still have a look at bygone games, rhymes and other amusements without fear of drowning in self-satisfied nostalgia.  Many games and rhymes in Scotland were found in some form up and down the country.  Anyone wishing to dive into further study should immediately consult Robert Chamber's 19th century classic The Popular Rhymes of Scotland (3rd edn., 1870). Those games marked * are found in Alice Gomme's The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, And Ireland (1894).

Games

   The following recollection of Victorian games, now all long extinct, are detailed in Arbroath, Past and Present by James McBain (1887), except those marked with an asterix (see above):

Kirk The Gussie

This was a ball and stick game, a little like miniature golf, except the 'ball' (probably a stone, had to find its way into a number of holes in its course, as well as reaching a final goal.

                                                          Call The Guse*

   This game involved one player having a paper unknowingly marked with some ridiculous saying being pursued by the rest, who cry out 'Hunt the Goose'.

Docker

  A small stone was placed on a boulder and aimed at by the player who had to shout 'docker', and he score one point if he dislodged it. But, if he failed to say the word, his opponents broke in and said it and earned the point.

                                                             Capie Hole*

'A hole is made in the ground, and a certain line drawn, called a Strand, behind which the players must take their stations. The object is at this distance to throw the bowl into the hole. He who does this most frequently wins. It is now more generally called " The Hole," but the old designation is not quite extinct. It is otherwise played in Angus. Three holes are made at equal distances. He who can first strike his bowl into each of these holes thrice in succession wins the game.'

Kick, Bonnetie, Kick

The person who was 'it' guarded his bonnet, placed on the ground, and the others tried to grab it.  Anyone who got caught during the attempted snatch was the new 'it'.

Cat and Dog*

'An ancient game played in Angus and Lothian. Three play, and they are provided with clubs. These clubs are called " dogs." The players cut out two holes, each about a foot in diameter, and seven inches in depth. The distance between them is about twenty-six feet. One stands at each hole with a club. A piece of wood about four inches long and one inch in diameter, called a Cat, is thrown from the one hole towards the other by a third person. The object is to prevent the Cat from getting into the hole. Every time that it enters the hole, he who has the club at that hole loses the club, and he who threw the Cat gets possession both of the club and of the hole, while the former possessor is obliged to take charge of the Cat. If the Cat be struck, he who strikes it changes places with the person who holds the other club ; and as often as these positions are changed one is counted in the game by the two who hold the clubs, and who are viewed as partners.'

                                                                Troap*

'A game played by two persons, with bandies or sticks hooked at the end, and a bit of wood called a nacket. At each end of the ground occupied a line is drawn. He who strikes off the nacket from the one line, tries to drive it as near the other as possible. The antagonist who stands between him and the goal tries to throw back with his hand the nacket to the line from which the other has struck it. If he does this

he takes the place of the other. If not, the distance is measured between the striking point and the nacket with one of the sticks used in striking, and for every length of the stick one is counted against the caster.'

                                                        Whigmeleerie*

'A game occasionally played inAngus. A pin was stuck in the centre of a circle, from which there were as many radii as there were persons in the company, with two names of each person at the radius opposite to him. On the pin an index was placed, and moved round by every one in turn, and at whatsoever person's radius it stopped, he was obliged to drink off his glass.'

Memories of the '45?

In the 19th century there was a regrettable habit of folklorists to ascribe ancient and significant meaning to the most mundane of children's games.  So, Ring-A-Roses, for instance, was said to be a distorted memory of the great plague.  Experts now think this is not the case.  But the following, again from Arbroath, possibly remembers the stationing of Hessian troops in the town, there to support the Hanoverian government during the Jacobite insurgency.

   This girls' game had two teams.  The first one addressed the other:

Have you any bread and wine,

Bread and wine, bread and wine?

Have you any bread and wine?

Can a teerie, arrie ma torry.

   The second team responds:

Yes, we have some bread and wine,

Bread and wine, bread and wine,

Yes, we have some bread and wine,

Cam a teerie, arrie ma torry.

   First Side - We shall have a glass of it, etc.

       Answer - One glass of it you shall not get, etc.

   First side - We are King George's loyal men.

                         Loyal men, loyal men;

                      We are King George's loyal men,

                         Cam a teerie, arrie ma torrie.

   Answer -   What care we for King George's men,

                         King George's men, King George's men;

                     What care we for King George's men;

                         Cam a teerie, arrie ma torrie.

     The game then ended in a mock scrummage or battle.

Old Forfar Rhymes

   Here's a simple old rhyme that one echoed through the black-and-white, long ago lanes of Forfar:

Mrs Greenie lost her peenie

On the Farfar washing greenie.

   The website Tobar an Dualchais, Kist O'Riches, is a repository of oral tradition and once of its contributors is Forfar lady Jean Rodger, whose 1976 remembrance of a rhyme concerning the  tripe shop-owner Mary Grubb can be heard on the website (the link is here).  Local girl's incorporated this local character into their skipping and counting games:

One, two, three and hop, Mary Grubbie's tripe shop!

 
   Mary, whose surname, extended as 'grubbie' was suitable to her appearance, was famous for her sayings, the most famous of which was, 'I wish I wis deid so I wid get peace to live.'

   Jean Rodger also recalled the ghost which haunted the South School at Forfar.  Never seen, it was obviously pathetically under nourished, for it issued the plaintive cry:

Pea soup, pea soup, I'm braking my hert for pea soup!

   (Jean's anecdote can be heard here)

A Tongue Twister

   We finish a little further north of Forfar with this tongue twister, in two versions:

The black backit pairtrick

Flew ower the Kirk o' Cortachy.

Twa pairtricks flew ower

the kirk o' Cortachy the nicht.

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