Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/364

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28 Collectanea.

the trick I have called the " Mended Ends." One or two others, perhaps, like the Basuto trick referred to above, evince an inclination towards legerdemain.

It seems proper here to mention that during a tour in the low countries in the fall of 1905, I saw what may have represented a European form of another East African trick published by Dr. Cunnington {J. A. I., vol. xxxvi., Jan.-June, 1906 : Trick No. 18 of the Ubwari, Lake Tanganyika). I was testing the knowledge of Cat's Cradle possessed by some children at Tilburg, South Brabant, and one of them attempted to show me a process which began with extending the string on the wrists, and, after a manoeuvre with the side string, ended by laying hold of the string behind one of the wrists and whipping it clear. As I did not know the trick and the little girl could not do it, we got no further. It is easy, however, to present the Ubwari trick in a simpler form by giving a half-turn to the radial side string and inserting both hands in this fresh loop, keeping the straight string still on that side. The string can then be freed from the back of one or other wrist, but not both. It might be worth looking out for this trick in England or on the Continent. It is of a kind that might be expected to have a wide distribution.

Since my notes on Cat's Cradle appeared in Folk-Lore in March, 1906 (vol. xvii., p. 73), I have obtained one or two additional names for some of the figures.

A young lady at Haarlem who played Cat's Cradle just as I learnt it (that is, without the Korean or " Scraggly " figures),^ called the first position " de Brug," or the bridge, and '' Fishin-the- Dish," " Het Varken op de Leer," or the pig on the ladder, i.e. the pig hung up in the butcher's shop. ^

^ I afterwards got the " Scraggly " figure from a Rotterdam man employed at a hotel at Medemblik in North Holland.

-I have seen the "ladder "in question in butchers' shops at Clifton, viz. two parallel rails about eighteen inches apart, united by straight rungs at intervals ; but on enquiry I cannot find the name " ladder " applied to it. One butcher at Cambridge whom I interrogated had heard it, but considered it strange and thought the speaker might be a foreigner. Other Cambridge butchers gave the name " rail " to the rectangular system of three or four rods, generally duplicated, which run round the ceiling of the shop, supporting hooks for carcases.