Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/441

 10 s. VIL MAY 11, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

361

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1907.

CONTENT S.-No. 176.

NOTES : Obsolete English Games, 361 Early British Names : their Interpretation, 363 Chertsey Monumental Inscriptions, 364 The Gypsy Lore Society Christ s Hospital Site Birch's ' Sobriquets and Nicknames,' 366 "Wangun": its Etymology " Lead his own horse "- 'N.E.D.,' a Wrong Reference, 367.

QUERIES' "Every man has his price," 367 'The Con- finement: a Poem '-Papal Styles: "Pater Patrum"- Stafford House, 368-" Hail, smiling morn ! "-Swinburne Family 'Rock of Ages': Gladstone's Latin \ersion 'A Poetical Revenge 'Chamberlain Family of Lincoln- shire-" Black Horse" Inn : Dean of Killaloe, &c., 369- Lieut. Henry Clarke, R.N.-Ambrosio Spiera: his Advent Sermons Hungarian Rare Plant, 370.

REPLIES Haymarket, Westminster, 370 Hornsey Wood House : Harringay House, 371-The Mysteries of the Embo Baronetcy, 372-' A Scourge for the Assman '-Carlyle on Painting Foam - Danteiana - \\ orple \\ ay-]S otices in the United States and Switzerland, 373-" Bulk" and Baskish "Bulka"- Authors of Quotations Wanted - " Forwhy," 374-St. George : George as a Christian Name 375-" Piscon-led "-Marly Horses-" Idle Dick Norton," 376 Court Leet : Manor Court Flint and Steel "Paws off Pompey"-B.V.M. and the Birth of Children, 377- ^bSS-meeU: Horses with Four White Feet- ' The Children of the Chapel' Longfellow " Kmgsley's Stand "Step-Dances, 378.

NOTFS ON BOOKS : ' Some Curios from a Word-Col- lector's Cabinet ' ' Book-Prices Current 'Reviews and Magazines.

Notices to Correspondents.

OBSOLETE ENGLISH GAMES. Barleybrake. Dr. Johnson in his dic- tionary calls this " a kind of rural play," and from Sidney's 'Arcadia,' where it is fully described in Book I. last eclogue, he quotes these lines :

By neighbours prais'd, she went abroad thereby At barleybrakes her sweet feet to try. It was played by six persons, three of each sex, coupled by lot. A piece of ground was divided into three compartments, of which the middle was called Hell. The couple in this division had to catch the others advanc- ing from the two sides ; the last couple caught were said to be in Hell, and then the game ended. The difficulty was in the catching ; for the first couple in the middle compartment could not separate before they had caught the other tw T o couples, who might drop hands when hard pressed. In Thomas Morley's first book of ballads (1595) there is one of which the last verse is :

Fie then, why sit we musing,

Youth's sweet delight refusing ?

Say, dainty nymphs, and speak,

Shall we play barleybrake ? In Beaumont and Fletcher's ' The Captain,' V. iv., acted at Court in 1613, Frederick

reads a note telling him to come to Signer Angelo's, where Piso and Lelia " are to be married, and we not far behind," and exclaims :

Would I had time To wonder at the last couple in Hell !

There is a long descriptive poem of ' Barleybrake ' in a pamphlet under that title, written by W. N., gent., in 1607, quoted at p. 311 of vol. i. of Drake's * Shak- speare and his Time.'

Burton in part ii. sec. ii. numb. iv. of ' The Anatomy of Melancholy ' (1621) says :

" The ordinary recreations in winter are cards, dice, arid shovelboard, and let the people play at ball and barleybrakes."

In Ben Jonson's * Sad Shepherd,' I. ii. (1635), Clarion suggests that the Shepherd who

" would wrestle should do so with a lass, and give her a new garment, after a course of barleybrake."

Sir John Suckling (1646) describes the game in a poem of three stanzas. The first stanza opens thus :

Love, Reason, Hate, did once bespeak

Three mates, to play at Barleybrake.

Love, Folly took : and Reason, Fancy :

And Hate consorts with Pride. So dance they !

Love coupled last : and so it fell

That Love and Folly were in Hell.

See ' Jonson Anthology,' edited by Prof. Arber.

Herrick in 1648 has a poem on ' Barley- brake ; or, Last in Hell ' : We two are last in Hell ; what may we feare To be tormented, or kept Pris'ners here ? Alas ! if kissing be of plagues the worst, We '11 wish in Hell we had been last or first.

The forfeits evidently were kisses.

In the third act of ' The Royal Shep- herdess ' (1669), by Thomas Shadwell, Poet Laureate, there is a song commencing : Thus all our life long we are f rolick or gay, And instead of Court revels, we merrily play At Trap, and at Keels, and at Balibreakum, At Gon and at Stoolball, and when we have done To each pretty lass we give a green gown.

Basset is called in Johnson's dictionary " a game of cards, invented at Venice." It was popular in the seventeenth century. Evelyn mentions in his diary having seen Charles II. on Sunday evening, 25 Jan., 1685, sitting in the gallery at Whitehall, " whilst about 20 of the greate courtiers, and other dissolute persons were at Basset, round a large table, a bank of at least 2,0001. in gold before them." Macaulay refers to it in his ' History of England,' vol. i. p. 431. Evelyn also notes that, on the flight of James II., King William and Queen Anne, on 13 Feb., 1689, " came to Whitehall she