Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/286

 2 74 ^ Children s Ganie-and the Lyke Wake.

A Children's Game and the Lyke Wake.

1. On Jan, 20 and Feb. 24 of the present year, two letters of mine appeared in the Literary Siippleme?it of the Times. Their immediate purpose was to deal with traces of the Lyke Wake in Shakespeare's tragedies. I began from a game which I used to play as a very small boy, and from the words that were spoken in the game. Out of these letters, a considerable correspondence arose. From many quarters, persons to whom grateful acknow- ledgments are due, wrote sending similar rhymes and furnishing other evidence in agreement with the childish tradition. I have before me some twenty versions of an old ballad which seems to go back to the Lyke Wake, and a version of a ballad in the Robin Hood cycle. At the request of the Editor I have put together a short summary of my material, and have added some com- ments which suggest themselves.

2. And first as to the game. The players — young boys and girls, I myself was not more than nine — assembled in winter evenings in a dark place or passage. One of our number lay supine on the ground. The company then joined hands and went round in a ring reciting and not singing — this is important —reciting a dirge. The verses rose to a climax with the words, " and the worms crept out and the worms crept in." At this point the dead person came to life, and amid general shrieks, seized upon a chance member of the ring, who in turn lay dead. I have not been able to find an exact parallel to the game. It seems to imitate the Lyke Wake with the addition of the raising of the dead man. The scientific character of this magazine must excuse my quoting a partial, though gruesome, parallel. At some Irish wakes, so the story goes, the neighbours come in and drink beer round the corpse. They end by throwing bottles at him and challenging him to drink as though he could be brought to life. The Dance of Death itself, for which the reader may be referred to a fine description in the twenty- seventh chapter of John Inglesant, may be regarded as arising from a similar origin, but not as identical with our game. The ballad about which something is said below is probably related to the Dance of Death. Our first result, then, is that these ballads were related to a dramatic game representing a funeral.