Volume I Part 29 (1/2)

Cutters and Trucklers

A remembrance of the old smuggling days. The boys divide into two parties; the Trucklers try to reach some given point before the Cutter catches them.-Cornwall (_Folk-lore Journal_, v. 60).

Dab

Dab a prin in my lottery book; Dab ane, dab twa, dab a' your prins awa'.

A game in which a pin is put at random in a school-book, between the leaves of which little pictures are placed. The successful adventurer is the person who puts the pin between two leaves including a picture which is the prize, and the pin itself is the forfeit (_Blackwood's Magazine_, Aug. 1821, p. 36). This was a general school game in West London in 1860-1866 (G. L. Gomme).

Dab-an-thricker

A game in which the _dab_ (a wooden ball) is caused to spring upwards by a blow on the _thricker_ (trigger), and is struck by a flat, bottle-shaped mallet fixed to the end of a flexible wand, the distance it goes counting so many for the striker.-Ross and Stead's _Holderness Glossary_.

This is the same as ”Knur and Spell.”

Dab-at-the-hole

A game at marbles (undescribed).-Patterson's _Antrim and Down Glossary_.

Dalies

A child's game, played with small bones or pieces of hard wood. The _dalies_ were properly sheep's trotters.-Halliwell's _Dictionary_.

Evidently the same game as ”Fivestones” and ”Hucklebones.”

Davie-drap

Children amuse themselves on the braesides i' the sun, playing at ”Hide and Seek” with this little flower, accompanying always the hiding of it with this rhyme, marking out the circle in which it is hid with the forefinger:-

Athin the bounds o' this I hap, My black and bonny davie-drap; Wha is here the cunning yin My davie-drap to me will fin.

-Mactaggart's _Gallovidian Encyclopaedia_.

The davie-drap is a little black-topped field-flower.

Deadily

A school game, not described.-Mactaggart's _Gallovidian Encyclopaedia_.

Diamond Ring

My lady's lost her diamond ring; I pitch upon you to find it!

Children sit in a ring or in a line, with their hands placed together palm to palm, and held straight, the little finger down-most between the knees. One of them is then chosen to represent a servant, who takes a ring, or some other small article as a subst.i.tute, between her two palms, which are pressed flat together like those of the rest, and goes round the circle or line placing her hands into the hands of every player, so that she is enabled to let the ring fall wherever she pleases without detection. After this she returns to the first child she touched, and with her hands behind her says the above words. The child who is thus addressed must guess who has the ring, and the servant performs the same ceremony with each of the party. They who guess right escape, but the rest forfeit. Should any one in the ring exclaim ”I have it!” she also forfeits; nor must the servant make known who has the ring until all have guessed under the same penalty. The forfeits are afterwards cried as usual.-Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 223.