Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/333

Rh when there was a flush in the stream; this I afterwards verified, as, on a visit after rain, the rattle of the mill was quite audible, even before you got to the place.

Children's Games.—Miss Courtney's Cornish children's games bring back the hours of happy childhood, as many of them are quite familiar; but, unfortunately, I have forgotten most of the rhymes. Our old nurse in the house before I was born was a Kilkenny woman Ann Lawless, née McCormick, by name, and she seemed to have had a nearly unlimited store of round games for children. I have remarked, when in Cornwall, the natives are very fond of introducing into the games loving and kissing; our rhymes were more general, but otherwise the games are nearly identical. The words of "My daughter Jane" were somewhat like, but it was a prince, not a duke, that came to wed. The last verse of the rhyme was—

I forget our name and rhyme for the game called "Pray, pretty maid;" but the person in the ring, he or she, walked around with a handkerchief, repeating a rhyme, and at the end of it struck the person, he or she, wanted to come in. The Counting-out rhyme in general was, —

The oracle, however, was allowed a great deal of latitude, all that was expected of him being that he should begin with the regular formula. In fact, as a rule the favourite oracle was some one who could knock off a pithy or funny rhyme. I remember in a party of big girls and boys from sixteen years old and upwards, there was a young lady who was supposed to dispense with stays, and had a figure like a sack of flour; another was very learned, and the third a Fenian; the rhyme was somewhat as follows:—