Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/178

 , differs materially from nine-pins, though requiring the same number of pins. At nine-pins, the player stands at a distance settled by mutual consent of the parties, and casts the bowl at the pins; the point is to beat them all down in the fewest throws. Skittles is played by bowling and tipping; the first at a given distance, the second standing close to the frame upon which the pins are placed, and throwing the bowl through in the midst of them. In both cases the number of pins beaten down before the return of the bowl (for it usually passes beyond the frame) are called fair, and reckoned to the account of the player; but those that fall by the coming back of the bowl are said to be foul, and of course not counted. One chalk or score is reckoned for every fair pin; and the game of skittles consists in obtaining thirty-one chalks precisely. Less loses, or at least gives the antagonist a chance of winning the game; and more requires the player to go again for nine, which must also be brought exactly to secure himself. Football needs no explanation. Tick-tack was a kind of backgammon, played both with men and pegs, and more complicated than the ordinary backgammon, or, as the French call it, tric-trac, whence our name of tick-tack. It is frequently referred to by English writers of the seventeenth century. Seize noddy, maw and ruff, were all games of cards. Sir John Harrington, after describing primero, perhaps the most ancient game of cards played in England, enumerates in rhyme the card games that succeeded it:—