Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/87

Rh hand palm towards you, bend it over outside the radial string and up into the loop. Draw tight, making a right palm string. A similar move with the left hand makes a left palm string. Take up the left palm string on the back of the right middle finger—draw tight. Take up the right palm string on the back of the left mid-finger—draw tight. Fig. 1.



. 1.

This opening figure, most perfectly arranged, consists of two base strings, one radial and one ulnar, which pass from hand to hand, round the backs of the hands or wrists, cross each other, and continue as two slant loops held up by the middle fingers. The strings of these loops crossing make a figure of X on either side of the central space.

The radial base string crosses outside the ulnar and the left mid-finger loop passes inside the right. I believe this arrangement to be general or universal. It is a pure convention, and has no effect on the play, though its influence may be traced in the succeeding figure by its giving origin there to similar preferences of one string over another.

II.

Second Player. Approach a hand from the radial and ulnar sides to the crossing X strings of the figure and grasp the Xs with thumbs and indices in the angles which open towards the first player's pa^ms. Draw the hands apart, lower them, and pass them up between the side strings which connect the first player's hands. Push thumbs and indices well up, separate the hands, taking these side strings with them and lifting the whole figure from the first player's hands. Fig. 2.