Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/93

Rh arrotondati), eighteen or sixteen in number, or with peach-stones. Two boys play. They first determine who is to take the pisuli, as they are called. The winner at this preliminary trial puts them all into the hollow of his hand and throws them into the air (in alto), catching them as they fall on the back of his hand. Again he throws them up and catches them in the hollow of his hand. These latter he wins.

A lu Struzzi.—Is played with hard-boiled eggs (uova sode). The eggs are tried thus: a boy with the end of his own egg beats upon an egg proffered by another boy; whichever egg is broken is forfeited.

A la Sciddicalura.—This little game breathes of country simplicity. Two boys select a spot of ground on an inclined plane. First a nut is started down the incline, and allowed to remain wherever it has stopped. Then the other boys each in turn set a nut or an almond rolling down the same descent, and hope it will strike the original nut.

A Murari.—In this a little more skill is evidenced. Upon a rising ground a row of nuts, apples, or apricot stones, contributed by all the players, is placed. The players, according to priority, and at a distance settled amongst themselves, pitch similar objects at this row, and what each knocks out he wins.

This is quite familiiar to English boys, by whom it is played with marbles.

Sometimes the nuts to be struck out are put in a small heap, and then the game has a suspicion of pyramids (a li casteddu).

A lu Granu supra la nuci.—This is played as follows:

A boy who is to act as the bank places firmly and upright in the ground a walnut, and surmounts it with a piece of two centesimi (a diminutive coin which in our peregrinations in the Peninsula it has never been our great good fortune to have seen). Other boys fire away at this with their own walnuts from a fixed distance. If the standing walnut is fairly hit and the coin falls off the thrower wins it.

There is a variety of this game, the interest in which extends beyond Sicily. Sometimes the walnut is placed upright before a hole, and into this hole the coin must not fall. Here is Aunt Sally in a state of decent simplicity, devoid of its huge tropical fruit and its sometimes unsober boisterousness, acquired through becoming a pas-