Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/276

252 That rhymes were as common in the amusements of schoolboys as in that of girls we may learn from the following account of some rhyme games given by Mr. Gosse from the same source I have before stated. He there states that rude doggerel rhymes were repeated on occasions among the boys and learned from one another. Thus a boy would come suddenly behind another, and seizing him by the shoulder proceed to dig his knee into the posterior of the other, at every line of the following:

the last line accompanying a kick of double vehemence.

The word FINIS at the end of books was turned into the following poetic flight:

And the variant I have heard is :

The next the boys no doubt learnt from their little sisters, since the imagery, as Mr. Gosse says, is of a decidedly feminine cast: