DISCOVERY 



325 



their father as figs ; and will draw them towards him 

 and kiss them and establish them at his side — playing 

 with some of them, and himself saying : ' Wineskin, 

 Hatchet,' and permitting them to go to sleep upon 

 him to his anguish." ' How Wineskin and Hatchet 

 was played I do not think is known. With some 

 games we are more fortunate. A kind of Prisoner's 

 Base, \\-hich was called Night and Day from the names 

 given to the two sides, is alluded to by Plato. In 

 this a piece of pottery, black upon the one side and 

 white upon the other, was tossed up. If white came 

 down uppermost, Day were the catchers and Night 

 had to get " home " before being caught. Plato, 

 again, compares the earth to a kind of ball, the cover 

 of which was made of twelve different-coloured pieces 

 of leather, and a variety of ball games are described 

 bj^^Pollux, who gives us also the ancient Greek varieties 

 of Tug-of-War, Hide and Seek, and Blind Man's Buff. 

 Why the latter got the name of Brazen Fly I do not 

 know. A child was blindfolded and turned round. 

 He then recited, "I'm going to hunt a brazen fly," 

 while the others beat the blindfolded "it" with 

 strips of leather, shouting, " You will hunt but you 

 will not catch." 



The boys of Tarentum played / Bring out the Lame 

 Goat, but we know only the first line of the song. 

 The girls' game Cheli Chelone we may perhaps call 

 Tortv Tortoise ; the first word seems to be a mere 

 nonsense reduplication of the sound of the first syllable 

 of chelone. Liddell and Scott rather strangely 

 describe it as a kind of Hunt the Slipper. Pollux 

 says, " it is rather like The Pot." ^ One girl sits down 

 and is called the Tortoise, while the others dance 

 round her singing : 



" Torty Tortoise, what are you doing in the middle ? 

 " I am weaving wool and Jlilesian cloth." 

 " But what was your child doing, when he was lost ? 

 " He jumped from his white horses into the sea." 



I imagine that the last line was the prelude to 

 some action by which a child was caught, and that 

 Tortv Tortoise belongs to the same genus as Mother 

 Mother the Pot Boils Over, Gipsy, and Old Cranny Crow. 



Milesian woollen cloth was the best in Greece, and 

 upon its export the material prosperity of Miletus 

 largely depended. This explains the close friendship 

 between Miletus and Sybaris in South Italy. When 

 Sybaris was destroyed by her rival and neighbour 

 Croton in 510 B.C., the Milesians went into mourning. 

 Their grief is intelligible enough when we remember 



• The Characters of Theophraslits, translated by Jobb. 



* The Pot was a boys' game. One boy in the centre held 

 a pot on his head with his left hand, the others ran round 

 him shouting, " Who holds the pot ? " ; the answer to which 

 ■was " I, Midas." Whoever " Midas " succeeded in touching 

 with his foot, took his place in the centre. 



that Sybaris was the depot for the Milesian trade in 

 the Western Mediterranean. The woollen goods 

 were landed at Sybaris, transported by land across 

 the toe of Italy, and thence reshipped to Etruria and 

 the markets of the West. 



A singing game called Posies is mentioned by 

 Athenaeus. It clearly resembles Nuts in May and 

 possibly My Delight's in Tansies, but I am not certain 

 how the latter is played. The following verses are 

 cjuoted : 



" Where are my roses, where are my violets, where is my 

 beautiful parsley ? 

 These are my roses, these are my violets, and this is my 

 beautiful parsley. ' ' 



Why. asks Plutarch in his Greek Questions, was 

 there a custom amongst the Bottiasan maidens, as 

 they danced, to sing, " Let us go to Athens " ? He 

 answers his conundrum by reference to mythological 

 history. Bottiaea was founded by Cretans in pre- 

 historic times, and with the Cretan settlers came 

 Athenians. For Athens, until Theseus slew the 

 Minotaur, paid a yearly tribute of men and maidens 

 to Minos, King of Crete, but these were not all given 

 to the Minotaur, and some of the survivors took part 

 in the Cretan colonisation of Bottijea. Hence it is 

 in memory of their Athenian origin that this popular 

 song is sung. Some scholars have taken Plutarch 

 seriously, but I do not myself believe that this yarn 

 is earlier than the fifth century B.C., when Athens 

 was bringing the Northern yEgean under her influence. 

 Readers of Herodotus will be familiar with many 

 other examples of the invention of legendary connec- 

 tions in prehistoric times in order to justify the pre- 

 tensions of Athenian imperialism. It may quite well 

 b; that the Theseus story came into the game, for a 

 singing game I think it pretty obviously is. We may 

 compare — 



" Lend me a pin to stick in my thumb. 

 To carry the lady to London town " — 



which is played as far from London as Fifeshire ; or 

 the common English game — 



" How many miles to Babylon ? 

 Three-score and ten. 

 Will we be there by candle-light ? 



Yes. and back again. 

 Open your gates and let us go through. 



Not without a beck and a boo. 

 There's a beck and there's a boo 

 Open your gates and let us go through." 



In the second Messenian War at the end of the 

 seventh century B.C., Aristomenes was the heroic 

 leader of the rebels against Spartan rule. " When 

 Aristomenes returned to Andania the women threw 

 ribbons and fresh flowers on him and recited in his 



