56 



DISCOVERY 



Elementary Geology, with special reference to Canada. 

 By A. P. CoLEMAX, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., and W. A. 

 P.\RKS, B.A., Ph.D., F.R.S.C. (J. M. Dent & Sons, 

 Ltd., 15s.) 



Climatic Changes : their Mature and Causes. By Ells- 

 worth Huntington and Stephen Sargent Visher. 

 {London ; Humphrey Milford ; New Haven : Yale 

 University Press, 17s. 6d.) 



Correspondence 



GREEK CHILDREN'S GAMES 



Sir, 



To the Editor of Discovery 



May I add a couple of notes to Professor Halliday's 

 paper 011 " Greek Children's Games " ; and may I hope, 

 by the way, that that paper i.i not Professor Halliday's 

 last word on this pleasant theme, for he might easily go 

 on telling us more such stories for a long time to come ? 

 So world-old are our children's games that it is no wonder 

 they were played in the not remote antiquity of Greece 

 and Rome ; the fact is, I can scarce think of one of them 

 which the Greek children did not know. They trundled 

 their hoops, they whipped their tops, they rede a-cock- 

 horse on daddy's walking-stick ; they played with 

 marbles, nuts, or cherry-stones (ai/uiAXii, rpona) — " papes " 

 we u.sed to call them [Anglice " pips ") at my first of 

 schools ; they played chuck-farthing (a^fWi/Sa), ducks 

 and drakes (cVoo-Tpfii«o-/ios), " stots " or " bouncers " 

 [aTTOppii^it, oiipdvin), " chuckies " (rrfPTaXidii), cock-shies 

 (e(p(SpiiTn6s), hide-and-seek (anoSiSpao-KliiSa), hie -spy 

 [KoXXaliiapos), tug-of-war (SifAKuo-TiVSo), king-of-the-castle 

 O.io-iXifSii), and I know not how many more. 



Professor Halliday tells us of blind-man's-buff, or that 

 form of it known as the " Brazen Fly " {pv'ia x"^"'!' 

 fiviipSa), and he asks whence comes the name. I think 

 I know. The fly is the fierce and angry Gad-fiy (Tabanus), 

 whose incursion into a field sets the cattle wild with 

 fear ; and the one player is " the fly," and the rest are 

 the cattle romping round. The yellow wasp-like colour 

 of the fly explain,? the " brazen " epithet ; but what has 

 all this to do with blind-man's-buff — why is " the fly " 

 blind-folded ? Because it was an old belief that these 

 flies, buzzing aimlessly around, were blind. Aristotle 

 says* that the piw^ dies of dropsy in its eyes, and Pliny 

 tells us so of Tabanus. Linnaeus accepted the story, 

 and described a common species as Tabanus cacutiens. 

 The Swedes call it " blind-knagg," the Italians " muia 

 ceca " ; and if I am not dreaming (but here some better 

 scholar may help or correct me), I think I have heard 

 that " muia ceca" in Italian is still applied to the game, 

 as well as to the fly. 



A word more about what Professor Halliday calls 

 " Torty Tortoise " — as Dr. Rouse also calls it in his delight- 

 ful little book of Greek and Latin " Chanties." I have no 

 doubt for my part (and Dr. Rouse accepts my suggestion) 

 that we have here not only the old game, but the very 

 selfsame tune, of " Jingaring " or " Here we go round the 

 Mulberry Bush," with its many verbal variants. 



The few scraps of the Greek version which remain need 

 emendation, obviously enough ; and we may emend, I 

 maintain, provisionally at least, more boldly in such a 

 case than we should dare do in an ordinary text. What 

 poor fragments of the " Mulberry Bush " would remain 

 two thousand years hence if we had only the dictionary- 

 makers to hand them on ! But children's memories are 

 better than all the lexicographers. I would emend 

 boldly ; for my ear convinces me that the old tune is 

 not to be mistaken in the few extant words. 



A child sits or stands in the middle of the ring, and 

 the others sing in chorus : ' ' What are you doing within the 

 ring, within the ring, within the ring. What are you 

 doing within the ring. On a cold and frosty morning ? " 

 Or so. I think, they sang it in Greek — Ti ttoli'is (v ra 

 peaw, fV Tw petrco, iv rut ^eVw, Ti Troiels €v to) peaw, Xalpf (?) x^'^^ 

 X()i.d>vri. What ;(«'Xi x^^'^"'! nieans I have no idea, nor 

 do I think it worth while conjecturing. What can 

 we make (save for a vague tradition) even of " Dickory, 

 dickory, dock," or what of " Merry-me, merry-me 

 Tanzy ? " I half believe, or suspect, that ;(f'Ai x^^'^"'! 

 is but an untranslatable corruption of something far 

 more ancient, more ancient perhaps than Athens ; just 

 as " Hey, diddle, diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle " is (we 

 are told) a corruption of a very ancient and even hallowed 

 Hebrew rhyme ! 



Then the child in the middle sings — " I spin my wool 

 and I A\ind my thread, wind my thread, wind my thread " ; 

 "Epin fKpapvopat, papvopai, papiopni, ktX. Another child 

 is pushed into the ring (I think), and the song goes on: 

 " What is your child a-doing in there, doing in there, 

 doing in there, " '0 S' tKyovos irov ti woki, ti ttoki, ti ttoi(1. 

 And so on, and so on, doubtless with variations ad libitum. 

 Only the other day in a German town I came upon, a 

 troop of little girls singing the same song. The one in the 

 middle had her little Icnuckles in her eyes, and as I passed 

 the rest were singing, " Nun fangt sie an zu weinen, zu 

 weinen, zu weinen " ; I wish I had waited to hear more. 



Not only do I seem to hear this old lilting tune in this 

 particular Greek game, but I hear it also in several others. 

 I think that in the mysterious wedding-chorus of f<Kopi, 

 Kopi Kopdivq we have the last line of the same tune, the 

 same refrain as in x^^'-' X'^' x^^'^"'! '• and, with all 

 respect to the commentators, I think the jingling words 

 are beyond analysis and translation. \\'e have the first 

 part of the verse again in " Come out, dear Sun, come 

 out in the sky, come out in the sky, come out in the sky " : 

 "E^fX " ^'^' "J^'f' 0'^' '7^'fi 0'^' ijXk. Again we have it 

 in: " Here I come with my limping Goat, m}- limping 

 Goat, my limping Goat " ; x'^y'"' Tpayia-Kov e^uyoi, (^aya, 

 f^aya. And the little maids in the festival precession 

 sang it once more, " Here we go up to London-town, to 

 London-town, to London-town " : lapfv ow 'A^Tjraff, 

 'Adfjva(e, 'Afliji/aff. 



In all of which several rhymes I am simply quoting 

 Pollux and others — with a very little emendation of my- 

 own. Yours, etc. 



D'Arcy W. Thompson. 

 The University of St. Andrews. 

 December 20, 1922. 



