Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/375

Rh remaining on the nose. The performance closes with an appropriate grimace.

(From a Devonshire boy, about 1871.)

A more complicated way is as follows:

Holding the strings as before, put the right index fi-om behind into the small loop. Carry it round the large loop's left string to the front, through the large loop from front to back and round outside the large loop's right string. Place the index on the nose, and conclude as before. Or reverse the crossing of the strings and reverse the movement of the hand (Fig. 10).

My sister, when eight or nine years old, hit on this way of doing the trick in her efforts to find out the first method. I have included it here as a good example of how variations might occur in tricks of a simple kind. Dr. Haddon has shown me a Melanesian trick called Buli which is evidently similar, but the method is simpler than either of the two I have given.

Two players, A and B.

A's wrists are tied with a piece of loose string. A similar string passing inside A's arms and string, connects B's wrists. The problem is for either player to free himself (Fig. 11).