Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/179

 In Thomas Heywood's play of "A Woman Killed with Kindness" (third edition, 1617), the game of ruff is mentioned, and is proposed to be played with honours. Double ruff, and English ruff, with honours, are mentioned in "The Complete Gamester" (1674), as distinguished from French ruff. Noddy is supposed to have been very similar to, if not the origin of, the game of cribbage; and noddy-fifteen is given in Carr's "Craven Glossary." Any number can play—the cards are all dealt out—the elder hand plays one (of which he hath a pair or a pryal, if a good player)—saying or singing, "There's a good card for thee," passing it to his right-hand neighbour. The person next in succession who holds its pair covers it, saying, "There's a still better than he," and passes both onward. The person holding the third of the sort (ace, six, queen, or what-not) puts it on, with "There's the best of all three." The holder of the fourth crowns all with the emphatic, "And there is niddy-noddee." He wins the tack, turns it down, and begins again. He who is first out receives from his adversaries a fish, or a bean, as the case may be, for each unplayed card. If seize have any particular signification, it may be the French sixteen, and in that case, if fifteen-noddy were made unlawful, they might play it with an additional point, just as ten pins may have been substituted for nine pins. Maw was played with a piquet pack of thirty-six cards, and any number of persons from two to six formed the party of players. At ruff, the greatest sort of the suit carried away the game; ruff became a term for a court-card, and to ruff meant to trump at cards. Hot cockles (said to be a corruption of the French hautes coquilles, but the French name for this game is Main-chaude, literally warm-hand) is a play in which one kneels, and, covering his eyes, lays his head