Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/376

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How comes it that the first volume of Mrs. Gomme's collection, published so long ago as 1894, has never been reviewed in Folk-Lore? This is a question that members of the Society may ask, though I am personally not called upon to answer. With the appearance of the second volume, completing the work, at all events it is time to give some account of it.

Imprimis, then, it is the first part of a Dictionary of British Folklore projected by Mr. Gomme: a project which every one who is interested in the subject must hope he will some time find leisure to carry into complete execution. The games collected here are arranged in dictionary-fashion. Not merely are the tunes and rhymes given, with all important variants, but the record is completed by diagrams showing how the players are placed at different stages of the games, or diagrams of the board or ground upon which the playing takes place. And the second volume is brought to an end with a Memoir on the study of children's games, discussing their anthropological significance.

The perusal of the book will bring back to most readers many a childish memory. Perhaps I may note one or two of my own as variants of the games described. The game called "Lamploo" I remember being played at Bristol in my boyhood under the name of "Lamp-out." There was a den, on one side of the ground only, and a goal on the other. The boy whose business it was to catch the others stood in the space outside the den. His hands were not clasped. The other boys had to cross the space where the catcher stood, touch the goal, and return without having been caught. Every boy caught was added to the capturing party. This always seemed to me, as Mrs. Gomme in fact suggests, a variant of another game here described under the names of "King Cæsar" and "King of Cantland." Mrs, Gomme notes that in Dorsetshire it is called "King-sealing." We called it "King Sillio." There was, I believe, on catching