Page:String Figures and How to Make Them.djvu/383

340 Fourth: Pass the index loops over the head (Fig. 765) (you may release the loops from the little fingers to increase the size of the index loops), and remove the hands from the other loops.

Fifth: A loop now hangs down in front of you, and if you pull on it, or on either string of it, all the strings will come off the neck.

The reason for the strings coming of[ the neck, after you have apparently

wound them on securely, is because when you put the index loops over the head you reverse the direction of the strings already on the neck and they are no longer wound around on it.

THE MOUSE

This figure is probably the most widely distributed of all the string figures. I have seen it done by the African Batwa Pygmies, the Philippine Negritos and Linao Moros, and American Indians of the Chippewa, Osage, Navaho and Apache tribes. Dr. Haddon gives it as an Omaha string trick (5, P. 218) and says it is