Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/378

 33^ Reviews.

have expected. It is enough, too, to enable the authoress tenta- tively to expound the significance of much that has hitherto been unexplained. Her Memoir is of great interest and no little im- portance, for the conclusions she has come to from a considera- tion solely of British games must form a starting-point for inquiries of a similar character into the games of continental children. These conclusions are modestly stated, and, startling as they may seem to persons who are strangers to anthropological investiga- tions, they are not mere hasty guesses, but are fairly reasoned out. We may not all be prepared to ascribe to the game of Touch so lofty an ancestry as that of a primitive taboo. There is, however, something to be said for the conjecture. It is cer- tainly not weakened by the variant game, apparently unknown to Mrs. Gomme, of Cross-touch. The rule of this game is that when "he" is pursuing one player and another passes between them, the chase must be transferred to the latter and to no other, so long as no other player comes between the pursuer and his quarry. Unless this be a modern innovation, to prevent the marking out and running down of one player, the compulsory transfer of the aim by the crossing of another player seems to hark back to the savage conditions of a taboo or a choice of victim.

The confusion between games founded on funeral or mourning customs and marriage or courtship customs is well pointed out. There has evidently been a transfer from the former to the latter. This has, I think, been aided by the savage difficulty in believing in death, a difficulty shared always by the young, with their superabundance of animal spirits and their consequent buoyance of hope. " Green Grass " clearly owes its origin to funeral rites. The transfer of words from one game to another has been con- stantly going on, and the adoption of new words is well illustrated by the instance of "Hunting" (where we get a street-song current some six or seven and twenty years ago after the Shah's visit to England), and another where "Up and down the City Road" (a street-song half a century old or more) is sung. The game of " Hood," it may be noted, has been studied more at length since the publication of Mrs. Gomme's first volume by Miss Mabel Peacock in these pages {Folk-Lore, vol. vii. p. 330). The local distribution and periodical celebration of games is one of great archaeological and ethnological interest, on which Mrs. Gomme