Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/372

 364 The other principal card-games of the period were ledam, noddy, bankerout, saunt, lanterloo, knave-out-of-doors, and post-and-pair. Sir John Harrington mentions lodam as succeeding maw in court patronage. It is not known how it was played.

Noddy is supposed by some to have been the original of cribbage, because the knave was called noddy. But it would seem that the game of noddy was played for counters, and that it was fifteen or twenty-one up. In Salton's tales, a young heir is likened to "a gamester at noddy; one-and-twenty makes him out." Nares says that noddy was not played with a board; but Gayton (Festivous Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654) speaks of noddy boards.

Saunt and sant are merely corruptions of cent, or cientos, a Spanish game. It was named cientos because the game was a hundred. It is supposed to have been the same as piquet.

Lanterloo was very similar to loo. The first mention of lanterloo occurs in a Dutch pamphlet (circa 1648).

Knave-out-of-doors was probably the same game as poore-and-rich, or as beggar-my-neighbour.

Post-and-pair is said to have resembled the game of commerce. It was played with three cards each; and much depended on vying, or betting, on the goodness of your own hand. A pair-royal of aces was the best hand, and next, a pair-royal of any three cards according to their value. If no one had a pair-royal, the highest pair won, and next to this, the hand that held the highest cards. This description seems to apply more nearly to brag than to commerce.

In Cotton's "Compleat Gamester," we find, in addition to the games already mentioned, the following which are obsolete—ombre, French-ruff, costly-colours, bone-ace, wit-and-reason, the art of memory, plain-dealing, Queen Nazareen, penneech, bankafalet, and beast. Most of these defunct games were very babyish contrivances. Boneace, for instance, was admitted by Cotton to be "trivial and very inconsiderable, by reason of the little variety therein contained; but," added the author, "because I have seen ladies and persons of quality have plaid at it for their diversions, I will briefly describe it, and the rather, because it is a licking game for money." The whole game consisted in this, the dealer dealt three cards to each player, the first two being dealt face downwards and the third being turned up. The biggest card turned up carried the bone, that is, half the pool, and the nearest to thirty-one in hand won the other half.

The games mentioned by Cotton, which are still practised, are all superior games; games of variety, and games into which skill largely enters. They are piquet, cribbage, all-fours, and whist. Of these whist is the king. It has been the game for some hundred and twenty years and its never-ending variety, and its well adjusted complements of skill and chance, seem likely to continue it in undisturbed possession of modern card-rooms.