1920] on String Figures 83 



There is yet a third class, which I call Class y, of string figures 

 to which primitive man is very partial : these are string paracl 

 where the unexpected happens. Take this as an example. Here is 

 a loop of string, held for convenience by my left hand high up. 

 Obviously if I twist my right hand round one string of the loop and 

 pull with the left hand, the right hand will be caught. If I give 

 the right hand a twist round the other string of the loop, it is 

 generally still more firmly caught. The problem is to give this 

 additional twist so that the string runs free when the left hand is 

 pulled. This can easily be effected by what is known in certain 

 South Pacific Isles as the Lizard Twist. [This was shown.] There 

 is no trickery ; the movements are simple, yet I predict that few 

 people, even if they have seen the twist, will succeed when they first 

 attempt to make it. String paradoxes or puzzles of this kind are 

 widely known, and are generally amusing. To show them, to be 

 shown them, and above all to show pleasure in them, often lead to 

 friendly intercourse with primitive folk, bat they are different in 

 kind from the figures about which I wish to talk. I put them, then, 

 on one side as not relevant to my subject to-night, and come back 

 to the formation as practised to-day of string designs in Classes a 

 and (3. 



\_The Lizard Twist. — The successive movements made in the 

 Lizard Twist may be put in the form of the following rules : — First : 

 Hold the string rather high in the left hand, the string hanging 

 down on the right and left sides in a loop. Second : Put the right 

 hand with its fingers pointing down and away from you through the 

 loop ; turn it round the right pendant string clockwise. Third : 

 Point the fingers upwards, move the right hand to the left between 

 your body and the pendant strings, then clockwise beyond the left 

 pendant string, then away from you, then to the right, and finally 

 towards you upwards through the loop. Lastly : Draw the right 

 hand down and to the right, and it will come free.] 



The study of string figures is new, and its history a short one. 

 I may dispose of the story prior to 1900 very briefly. From about 

 the middle of the nineteenth century onwards we find occasional 

 notices by travellers in wild countries of the fact that the natives 

 made, with a piece of string, forms different from and far more 

 elaborate than the Cat's Cradle of our nurseries, but (with the excep- 

 tion of two examples described in France in 1888 and two in America 

 in 1900) no details were given of how they were constructed, and in 

 only a few cases near the end of the century were drawings kept of 

 the patterns produced. There are more accounts of the Cat's Cradle 

 familiar to children in England ; indeed they go back to the eighteenth 

 century, for there is an allusion to it in English literature as long 

 ago as 1768, and Charles Lamb refers to it as played at Christ's 

 Hospital in his school-days. It is, however, a dull amusement, pro- 

 ducing, as usually presented, merely four or five designs of little 



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