Grappling with Hoops of Steel

Joanna here, talking about the history of hoop chasing and the many misconceptions we nourish about this.
 
Right off, let me explain how chasing or bowling or driving or rolling or trundling a hoop came about.

About seven minutes after the invention of the wheel, some bright young lad standing in the back of the cave noticed you could roll the thing and chase after it.  It probably took a half hour's experimentation to discover you could roll it even better by knocking at it with a short stick.  You could make it go fast or slow, turn, even spin backwards.  A new human activity — part sport, part contest, part art, part meditation — was born. 

It proved amazingly popular.  There's something in the human race that wants to chase a rolling object.  We're like golden labs. 

I want to claim Classical sources for my subject.  And, indeed, the Classical Greeks were great hoop trundlers. 

Oh.  Let me digress.  The word 'trundle', which we'd use in 1800 when our characters are talking about rolling a hoop, means 'to push or propel on wheels or rollers. As in,

"I doubt if Emerson could trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets."

That is a quote from the redoubtable Thoreau where he is very likely criticizing Emerson. 

Trundle also means 'to spin or twirl' and you can see how that would neatly fit in with what we do to hoops.
Like so many of our most robust words, 'trundle' comes to us from Middle English where 'trendle' meant 'wheel'.  We use the word trundle, nowadays, mostly in the concept of 'trundle bed' — which is a little bed with wheels that goes under the main bed for anyone who may not happen to know this. 

Back to the Greeks. 

Yes.  They rolled hoops.  We see this represented on vases and bowls and the odd mosaic.  One common representation of boy-with-a-hoop is Ganymede, whom we see over to the left, with hoop and live chicken.  The rooster in this picture is symbolic and represents an appropriate gift from a homosexual lover to the beloved.  It should not be taken as an indication one carried around poultry as part of the sport of  hoop bowling, in case you were wondering.

To the right we got a boy rolling, not hoops, but wheels in this mosaic of Sixth Century, AD. 

Small wheels are very popular during hoop-time, and make an interesting toy, requiring more skill to guide than the ordinary hoop. To trundle a wheel the boy uses a long stick, one end of which he places under the hub, and with which he both pushes and guides the wheel in a very interesting and skilful manner, as he runs after it.
Outdoor Handy Book  By Daniel "Dan" Carter Beard, 1896

The hoop is apparently the superior instrument for racing, as per this contest in 1807.  Hoop versus wheel.  Do not bet on the wheels.

A wager between Mr. Bennet and Mr. Parkbouse was decided on Friday morning, 1st inst. on the Clapham road, from the third mile stone on the common to the fifth, Mr B. who trundled the hoop, having gained the contest by some distance. We understand another wager, of 200 gs. has been offered by Mr. B. to trundle a hoop for five miles against any man that can be found to run a wheel the like distance.
 

Bruegel, when he paints his Sixteenth Century panorama of children's games, puts the hoop bowlers right up front and center. 

Historically, well into the Twentieth, hoops were made of two materials. 

One sort was forged in a blacksmith's shop from iron.  I imagine the construction was pretty much like that of barrel hoops.  In fact, I suspect a good many of the hoops rolling the streets were popped off a barrel someplace.  Hoops were also similar to the metal rims of wooden wheels -- another likely source of hoops for the disenfranchised poor. 

Hoops might have pairs of tin squares nailed to the inside of the circle, that clattered back and forth against each other and jingled as the hoop was rolled.  This goes right into the Twentieth Century.  See it there at the left along with the sarcastic hound and the rack of rats, also in the Bruegel painting above.  (Click on either of these to increase size.)  

Martial, the Classical Roman writer, says, of a similar setup.  "Why do these jingling rings move about upon the rolling wheel? In order that the passers-by may get out of the way of
the hoop."

Myself, I suspect the tin janglers served the same purpose as those playing cards I used to attach to the wheels of my bike.  (With clothespins.  Remember clothespins?) 
They were there to make a nifty racket, and they did.

The other kind of hoop — I said there were two — was made of ash wood, rounded on the outside, carved flat on the inside.  Looks like they were made from a single piece of ash, soaked and shaped, bent and fitted.     

Dorothy Palmer reminisces about life in the 1920s:   

We also had hoops, which were often old cycle wheels minus the spokes. To be very grand was to have a wooden hoop purchased from Perkins Penny Bazaar in the Market Place at Oakham or a steel hoop with a trundle made by the blacksmith.

The boys in the picture to the right are very obviously using bicycle tires with the spokes removed.

One variation — it seems to be Nineteenth Century — were hoops with the driving stick fitted permanently.  Maybe it was intended for small children.  The idea never really caught on.
A case of 'Not Clear on the Concept'.


In the interests of fairness, I have to add some contemporary anti-hoop propaganda in here.

The practice pursued by boys in trundling their hoops on the streets and footpaths has become a dange rous nuisance. The other day a gentleman was riding a rather spirited horse in Macquarie-street when a careless urchin drove his hoop against the animal's legs, when it instantly reared and plunged, and would have thrown its rider had not his good horsemanship enabled him to keep his seat . . . the boys ought to be compelled to quit the public thoroughfares, and to resort to places where no injury could arise from the pursuit of their pastimes.
The Hobart Town Daily Mercury; 18 August 1858

Hoops were the skateboards of their day.

So the burning question of the hour is — did girls bowl hoops, or was it only a sport for boys?

Anytime after about 1830, we see girls depicted with a hoop and stick.  An example is the charming Renoir at the top of the page.  In the last half of the Nineteenth Century, hoop rollers are as apt to be girls as boys.  Victorian moralists and physicians considered it wholesome, healthy exercise for young girls.  

Girls to the age of thirteen may be permitted to indulge at pleasure in play and exercise proportionate to their strength, with as little restraint as their brothers.  We would not send them into the cricket ground nor initiate them in at football, because there is a sociality of intercourse in such plays that is not feminine in nature; but we would not preclude them from exercise as strong and as unrestrained merely because it implied an effort of physical power; nor would we shut them out from the boys of their own age who are usually brothers or near relatives on any principle of precocious prudery, so long as such games are not dangerous or indecorous, if they are they are as unfit for the brother as for the sister.
We love to see girls of eleven or twelve trundling a hoop or running a garden-face in rivalry with Tom just returned from Eton.
George Stephen, A Guide to Service: The Governess 1844.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But what about in the Regency?  What about the Georgian era? 

I have no evidence one way or the other.  There's no indication girls didn't play with hoops.  But hard proof they did starts emerging in the teens of the Nineteenth Century.  And when it does, it's treated as a commonplace. 

Amusements there are which properly come under the denomination of sports, in which a little girl or boy may partake. The hoop, battledore, drum, kite, bat and ball,etc.
Early education, 1821

. . . and saw, at the farthest end of the terrace, a young girl, of about fifteen, running very fast, with a hoop, which she was keeping up with great dexterity for the amusement of a little boy, who was with her. The governess no sooner saw this, than she went in pursuit of her young ladyships calling after her, in various tones and phrases of reprehension, in French, Italian, and English; and asking, whether this was a becoming employment for a young lady of her age and rank. Heedless of these reproaches, Lady Julia still ran on, away from her governess.
Tales of Fashionable Life: Vivian, Maria Edgeworth, 1812

Whenever the lessons of her childhood had been concluded, she had always been permitted, and even encouraged, to join in many of those games and exercises, that are usually appropriated to the amusement of the other sex. Often has she quitted an abstruse book, or a beautiful drawing, to trundle her hoop, or run races with her playfellow Augustus. And when other girls have trembled under the rod of the dancing master, she has been gaining health and activity together,
Manners: a novel,  Frances Brooke, 1817

I can't end without admitting that long, long ago in the foolishness of youth, I attempted to trundle a hula hoop.  It was not a great success.  Perhaps I just lack the knack, but I think Hula Hoops are too light for the purpose.

I suspect the world would be a better place if kids still bowled hoops through the public streets. 

 

I wonder —  What 'olde tyme' toys have you played with.  Did you find it a satisfactory experience? 

Some lucky winner from the comments trail will receive an early, fresh-off-the-press copy of my new book, Black Hawk, though they will have to wait for about a month till I get some author copies.

 

 

Comments

[HJ]

Your penultimate paragraph raises the point I was thinking as I read this fascinating article - I thought children *bowled* hoops? I didn't know they *trundled* them. And I've always heard those beds called *truckle* beds, rather than *trundle* beds. (I see on checking that both words are used for the same bed.)

Hope this sounds enquiring rather than combative! I would love a copy of Black Hawk...

[D]

Hi Joanna, great post.

One of my earliest memories is of playing on a huge wooden rocking horse that was large enough for both me and my brothers. They're not seen as much now and when they are, they're only big enough for one. I think a lot of the simpler toys have lost out to electronics and simulated games now. I think one of my favourite games was playing with two tennis balls which we used to juggle against a wall while singing rhymes. Ah the simplicity of youth.

Really looking forward to Hawker's story.

[Virginia C]

I experimented with the pogo stick, the unicycle, the trampoline, and even the stick horse. Not being athletically gifted, I found them more injurious than entertaining. Better to stick with the repetition of the paddle ball, unless you bop yourself in the face! Kaleidoscopes were somewhat fascinating, as were jigsaw puzzles, unless that one last piece was missing

[Deb Marlowe]

We tried the same thing with our hoola hoops as kids, with the same unsatisfactory results. Too light! But I could hula that hoop for a long time and up and down from my hips to my knees!

We also had 'jumping jacks' which were little wooden men with latches on their backs which made them jerk about.

And I don't remember the name of the game, but it was a long wooden board, with two metal rods at the top. You started a metal ball at the bottom and tried to coax it upward along the rods by pulling them apart and pushing them together. The further you coaxed the ball, the more points you got. I played with that one for hours!

Fun blog, Joanna! Looking forward to Black Hawk!

[Michele Friedman]

Reading this all I could think of was if modern kids could tear themselves away from the TV these days they too could participate in such challenging physical activities from the past like trundling a hoop. And I'm trying to to think of any safety device that helicopter parents might insist on but other than maybe a helmet there doesn't seem to be much danger in this excellent gam. Thanks for keeping it alive in your books.

[Jane O]

Roller skates — not the kind people have now that come attached to boots, but the metal ones that were adjustable in length and width. You fit them onto your shoe (they hooked over the sole at the sides) and tightened them with a skate key, which you in turn wore on a string around your neck so you wouldn't lose it. We skated down the sidewalks, and sometimes in the street. Truly adventurous types would hitch a ride on a car or bus. You would grab hold of something, the trunk handle usually, and get pulled along. I was never that brave (or foolish) myself.
The skate key was also useful for playing potsie which was what hopscotch was called in my neighborhood.
Then there was jump rope, the rope usually being a hunk of old clothesline. (This was back in the days when people hung their clothes out to dry.) With a short rope, everyone jumped individually, but with a longer rope, two people turned while someone jumped in and out. Or with two long ropes you could do Double Dutch. That almost has to be a very old activity. I know I've seen ancient paintings with someone jumping over a couple of sticks being held by people.

[Kristal]

I'm quite good with a whizgig/buzz saw - preferably one made from a button. (The ones made from heavy paper don't work nearly as well.)

My kids have trundled hoops at a historical site - they thought it was tricky, but fun if you can get it going.

[Olivia Searcy]

Hi Joanna,

I did have a hula hoop, and managed to keep it going, once, for about 140 twirls. (I did not know I remembered this until now!) I never got that close again. I loved jacks (and I still do!) I liked Spirograph too. I was more interested in mastering a skill than in competition, but I would become highly competitive while playing Scrabble, for instance.

I love Jacob's Ladder and Thomatropes and wooden blocks as well. Its interesting to realize that I have yet to trundle a hoop, and imagine its more difficult to do than it seems.

[joanna bourne]

Hi HJ --

They are indeed both truckle and trundle beds. I think truckle is the more common term.

'Bowl a hoop' does seem to be used in our period -- at least I find one American reference to this in 1827. But trundle a hoop appears to be more frequently used.

[joanna bourne]

Hi D --

Yes! If you look at reproductions of old nurseries in England and the US, one of the first things to strike you is that they have big sturdy rocking horses.

Part of it, I think, is the expectation that toys will stay IN place, in that one nursery, and be used by a succession of children. Perhaps by generations of children. In modern times we expect 2.5 kids per household and a move from house to house every five years.

Part of the reason we see big traditional horses is that we're looking at the survivals. At the sturdy, expensive furniture made for the well to do and carefully preserved. We have fine china dolls from 1800, but not so many rag dolls from the period.

And I wonder if kids in 1860 played with the rocking horse a year or two longer than American kids play with the plastic ride-on toys we have now.

[joanna bourne]

I LOVE Kaleidoscopes. And they had them in our time period. I have references to them back to the early C18, and suspect they were around earlier.

Maybe I should do a blog post on them someday. *g*

[Janga]

Another fascinating post, Joanna. I never trundled a hoop, but I spent hours playing jump rope, hopscotch, jacks and pick-up sticks, all of which have been around for a long time. I still occasionally play the latter two with the grands, although my fingers are not nearly so nimble as they once were.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Deb --

The whole hula hoop thing is just a delightful example of somebody taking a technical innovation, (plastic,) and applying it to an old idea, (hoops,) and coming up with an entirely new creation. It's like the frisbee in that way. And, I think, the box kite.

Which is a complicated way to say I just approve the heck out of hula hoops. You can still buy them, but the kids don't go mad about the idea any more.

[Kat]

I was playing “jacks” with my nieces recently and found I had not lost the knack of it and it was still quite fun!

[Donna]

Hiya Jo, great post. I recently saw a documentary of children in a third world country using car tires in a similar fashion. The child had two long sticks that were placed on either side of the tire. He jabbed them inside the fold and pushed the tire along. Quite an interesting feat to keep the tire upright and rolling. Children are quite the inventive little buggers, aren't they.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Michele --

Much TV. Much organized sports. Much reluctance to let kids play by themselves outside. Much electronic games.

I am heartened by skateboards and parcourse.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Jane O --

Do you know, I never see people jumping rope any more. I cannot decide why this is.

At my schools the playground would have three or four ropes going at once, any day, in every weather.

Did they stop having jump ropes available in schools for some reason?

[joanna bourne]

Hi Kristal --

Right. That thingum you do with string and a large button. It is so very satisfactory and can be improvised about anywhere.

I don't know when they started doing that.

Now I know cats-cradles and string games are found in many cultures around the world and are very old.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Olivia --

Jacks. Yes. I do not know how old that game is. In its current form it would postdate small bouncy rubber balls, which I think are Victorian.

So, not so much jacks in the Regency time period, I thnk. But marbles. Yes.

I have absolutely never seen the point of marbles.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Janga --

Pickup sticks (jackstraws) would be Georgian and Regency. I think there's a scene in one of the Heyer books with folks playing jackstraws and some flirtatious behavior between hero and heroine. I don't remember which book.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Kat --

Oh Lord, I do not like to think how long it's been since I played jacks.

I know I had them around for the kids because I remember -- vividly -- stepping on the little caltrops year after year.

I was probably rather good at this once, but my older sister was better. No fun at all to play with her. ;[

One of the Alexi Panshin books, Starwell has a jacks game in it.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Donna --

Interesting. Bicycle rims -- like the 1922 photo above from, I think, Canada -- would likely work better. Probably not as available, though.

It occurs to me -- One thing that may add to the decline of hoop rolling is the rise of the soccer ball. In the third world I see kids playing outside all the time. But it's soccer they play.

[Taline]

Well I dont know how much old it would count as but besides the roller skates, big wheels.. I loved the doll head thingy.. It was a big doll head that you can put make up on and hair you can do up any style..now the funny thing is that as an adult I HATE doing my hair.. I dyr, spray and fluff, if that doesn't go well back to the pony tail!!!! Tal

[Sue Mccormick]

I HAD a hoop in the 1930s (St. Louis, MO) but I never got the hang of it. Also jacks, jackstraws, roller skates, and jumping ropes. (On our playground girls did not DO marbles, but I bought some because they were pretty.)
They don't make good jumping ropes anymore, I believe that is why they are in decline. The best jumping ropes are braided from old-fashioned clothes line; this is heavy enough to turn well and smooth enough to make misses hurt less. Today's schoolyard jump ropes are of rough hemp which is heavy enough to turn, but which HURTS when you miss. I tried to buy clothes line to braid a good jump rope for a children's center. You can't get the correct rope anymore.
(Maybe a manufacturer will read this and fix the jump rope problem.) I have seen 21st century kids do jump rope and enjoy it, but they don't like the rope itself.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Taline --

I think I know what you mean about the doll head. I don't have any idea how old this concept is.

ISTM doll hair, for good dolls in the Regency period, would have been human hair and would have needed to be cared for carefully. There's indication that girls of this period 'cared for' and nutrued the dolls and put them to bed and fed them 'tea'. (I have a scene in Black Hawk of a young child feeding the dolls tea.)

But I don't think makeup and hair care was a feature for dolls until we came to the era of plastic, cleanable, durable dolls.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Sue --

I had never once given a thought to the kind of rope needed for jump rope. Yes, it would need some weight to it. But not too much.

How very interesting.

[Mary Schultz]

Great blog, Joanna...brings back fond memories! We each had a hobby horse when very little and my younger brother had a "modern" rocking horse (plastic horse attached to springs that were attached to a metal frame)in addition to the traditional wooden one (made by my grandfather). Hoola hoops, pogo sticks (they're in stores now), stilts (I still have the ones my dad made for us), jump rope, hopscotch, dressup, tea parties and baby dolls were my favorite play activities until Barbie came on the scene. Homemade kites and kite flying have been a tradition in my family for 5 generations...every March I'm out with a kite and the grandchildren thinks it's histerical to watch me "run" with the kite!

[Melinda Belle]

My children and I were talking about hoola hoops the other day. It came up because on Facebook, I listed jacks, red-rover, and pick-up sticks as my favorite games. Actually when I was young I loved to hoola hoop and my mother was always saying it was great exercise for the waist!! So I did it. I was chubby and short-waisted which meant ARGH! What a great blog post. It makes me want to go hoola hoop!

[Karenmc]

We played baseball in our front yard with balls my grandmother made from old strips of cloth. She'd wind them as tightly as possible, sew up the ends, and we'd swing away at them. Every once in a while an old, worn one would go sailing out towards the road, a thin banner of material unraveling behind it. It was a grand way to play ball.

[Janet W]

I have a collection of very very old dolls: one even has a wax face (altho it's pretty messed up ... wax doesn't last like porcelain). Used to love playing jacks and that's an old-fashioned game. Janet W

[Phyllis]

I remember jumping rope a lot. I was terrible at skating of any sort, fell off my pogo stick when they were cool in the 70's, and jacks.... coordination isn't my forte. We played a lot of string games at school.

I played baseball (wiffle ball, really) ALL. THE. TIME. with my older brother and our neighbors. We had THE yard. Doesn't mean I can hit a ball very well even with all the practice. Then we played stuff like kick the can and hide and seek and so on, ranging over a few backyards that were all near each other. Good times.

[Quilt Lady]

You don't see kids playing hop scotch anymore and that is all we played as a kid. I also still have my barbie dolls which I played with alot.

[Tawana West]

Wellesley College has a hoop rolling contest every year. I don't know the history of when it started or why, but it is a lot of fun and such a grand tradition.

[Isobel Carr]

I now can’t stop picturing a group of men making a bet about who can trundle the farthest while carrying a rooster (after seeing the Ganymede on their Grand Tour). Don’t be surprised if that shows up in my next book, LOL!

[joanna bourne]

Hi Isobel --

Did you know it was right in this era -- about 1807 -- that Cambridge found it necessary to forbid Masters to trundle hoops or play marbles.

Truth is like, stranger than fiction.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Tawana --

There are several old schools in the UK that maintain an unbroken tradition of hoop rolling. It sounds like great fun.

My own High School had something of a tradition of hubcap stealing, but that is not the same. *g*

[joanna bourne]

Hi Quilt Lady --

I don't see as much hopscotch as I once did. It's a great pity. I used to be rather good at that.

I don't know anything about the history of hopscotch and related games. I'll bet you there is an interesting one.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Phyllis --

Baseball . . . I guess the Georgian and Regency equivalent would have been cricket.

I get the sense hoop rolling was considered more unisex than cricket. And yet, there must have been girls who played cricket.

I mean, why not?

[joanna bourne]

Hi Janet W.

I would really like to know the earliest form of the game of jacks. It probably had some predecessor that didn't use a bouncing ball.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Karenmc,

What a wonderful memory. I think of your grandmother cutting and saving and patiently rolling and rolling the strips of material to make the ball and get all misty.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Mary --

It's surprising how old the stilts idea is -- Breugel has them in his 'Games Children Play' painting, I think. And stilts are found nearly everywhere around the world. Great fun.

Pogo sticks, on the other hand, seem to me devilish hard. I never could seem to get the hang of it.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Melinda --

If I send one person off to fetch out their old hula hoop -- my work is done.

I see no reason why folks should not hula hoop into extreme old age, enjoying it all the way.

[Barbara Elness]

I used to play Jacks and Marbles, I think they are pretty old time, as well as Pick Up Sticks. I thought they were fun and I had quite the marble collection.

[theo]

Jacks, hopscotch, baseball (we had enough kids on our street to make two teams,) hula hoops, tether ball which is relatively new, came out in the 60's sometime (I think!) though it must be a take off on something else.

But the game I played most was three handed pinochle with my mother and gran. I think I was 7 or 8 when I started and I still love card games which are another things kids don't play anymore. The most you tend to see in card games now are at the casinos. But it's all relative.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Barbara --

I have to admit, marbles left me puzzled as a game. But I did love the beauty of them.

I'm still a fan of glass art. Love paperweights. And marbles are collectable. Folks pay reasonably good money for some of the older ones.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Theo --

I wonder if the video games killed off the impulse to play cards. If so, it's a sad thing. Lots of human interaction when you play cards, and none at all with a little hand-held calculator.

And -- thinking about this historically -- card games are very old.

[Jenny]

A spinning top, made from tin and you pump the handle up and down and the top spins. I had one as a child and it somehow disappeared. Then one day when my son was about 4 y.o. I found a top in a garage sale and bought it. We both had fun spinning it, and still have it.

Another old game was pick-up-sticks. Great dexterity - the hand always jumped just as you were about to pick up a stick and you lost your turn.

[Shannon]

My husband loves a cup and ball toy and spinning tops. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup-and-ball I can't think of any older toys that I liked to play with.

[Marie]

I used to watch my brothers and their friends get inside an old tire and roll it down the incline in our backyard. I never tried it because it looked like it hurt. I did try to roll a hula hoop and just like everyone else, had very little success.

[Anne Gracie]

Fun post, Joanna. I used to play skippy ( what we call jump rope down under) both on my own and in groups with a biiiig rope at school or wherever groups of girls congregated. We had pick-up-sticks, and cards, also knucklebones, and marbles — I still have my bag of marbles. Endless ball games, alone or in groups. My older sisters had hoops made of bamboo that we had for years and years, as hula hoops and also for bowling them along -- never heard of trundling hoops. One of my favorite activities was riding my cousin's home-made billy cart down the Very Steep Hill he lived on, and I also loved making mudslides and sliding down them. And we used rubber inner tyres to play with when we went swimming.

[cate]

Well, that fab blog post bowled me over(geddit ?).. But just thinking about hoops brought back so many memories of my childhood pre video ^& computor games, when - dependant on playground fashion/season- when we would play jacks, french skipping,two balls(just taught that to my daughter !),marbles...& if the boys would let us have a go..conkers !

[Beebs]

Hi Joanna

I think you're right about how toys were built to last. All I remember was that the rocking horse we played on was huge but even now I'm left with the impression that it was old then. I loved it though.

Great post, brought back some very fond memories hoola hoops, spinning tops kaleidoscopes and hopscotch. I loved hopscotch but never managed to get the hang of pogo sticks.

[Jane O]

Speaking of pick-up-sticks, is that what they are playing in Regency books when they play spillikins? I've always sort of assumed it was the same game, but I don't really know.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Jenny --

I remember the tops that spun with the twisty pumper up and down. I enjoyed them very much. They were metal, and I recall they'd rust in the rain and get tossed out.

Did we leave all our toys out in the rain?

By the time I had kids, this sort of top had morphed into plastic, mostly. But they had nifty variations.

Coooool things, tops. And gyroscopes even more so.

[joanna bourne]

My parents bought me one of those cup-and-ball games when I was four or five and we were down in Mexico. I think it's a traditional toy there.

Very ancient. Very challenging.

The game was painted bright colors and carved in designs. If I recall correctly, the cup was very shallow. Once you got the ball in the cup, it had a tendency to hop out again. So frustrating.

[Isobel Carr]

There's a famous cricket match between two female teams, so clearly some girls must have played with their brothers).

[Isobel Carr]

The hula hoop is alive and well at Burning Man. Whole camps devoted to it, LOL!

[joanna bourne]

Hi Marle --

That does sound like it would hurt. Sounds, in fact, like the punishment meted out to villains in some of the old folktales, back before they were cleaned up and made child-friendly.

They say we never regret the stuff we have done so much as we regret stuff we haven't done.

In this case, I think, not so much.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Anne --

I love these names: billy cart, skippy, knucklebones, (What does this mean? How is it played? Like, with real bones? Like, Ye Olde Englysh Knuckleybones?)

Why do I allofasudden feel like I had this staid and unexciting childhood?

[joanna bourne]

Hi cate --

'bowled over' *giggle*.

Now I have heard of conkers, but I've never actually seen it played.

Back when we lived in Paris there was a long row of horse chestnut trees outside the place. One year I collected the chestnuts and put strings around them and tried to play conkers my son.

It did not so much work, I'm afraid. I mean . . . nothing happened. I think we were not doing it right.

[joanna bourne]

Hi beebs --

In re toys made to last and old toys.

My husband had a set of wooden blocks when he was a child. Now, good blocks are harder to make than you would think. It is challenging to get everything exactly true and square and measure to a fraction. And then there's the sanding and finishing.

I do think that may be the only toy we succeeded in passing along. That and maybe the spirograph.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Jane O --

Spillikins is indeed pick-up-sticks, also called jackstraws.

The 'spillikin' was the thing picked up, interestingly enough, and doesn't seem to derive from the action of spilling the pieces out.

The dictionary suggests spillikin may be related to Flemish spelleken, pin, and ultimately from Latin spna, thorn.

This game may be the origin of the line in the traditional counting game:
'Five, six, pick up sticks.'

Looking at 'Jackstraw' ... this is the thing picked up. 'Jackstraws' -- plural -- is the game.

Word origin of the game 'Jack Straw' goes back to 1590, apparently. It's after 'Jack Straw', nickname of one of the leaders of Wat Tylers' rebellion in 1381.

They took their time naming a game after him, didn't they? Jackstraw became a single word in 1801.

I suspect Homo erectus played this game in a cleared spot on the cave floor in East Africa a million years ago.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Isabel --

Burning Man, huh? Way cool. I don't know if this is enough to re-establish hula hoop as a divertisment and harmless amusement for youth, but it's a step in the right direction.

[Dee Feagin]

Interesting post, as always. Thank you. When I was growing up and not out as now, the girls played jump rope, both single and double dutch, and of course, chanted the rhymes that went with them. Hopscotch was also a game we played and played and played. I was surprised to find that jacks are not as old as I thought (see post above). I was very good at those!

[joanna bourne]

Hi Dee --

Y'know -- that's one of the things I'm not sure has been transmitted. All those old rhymes. Do kids learn them any more? I think some of them were very old.

Girls, at least, used to play handclapping games where two or more would clap each other's hands and their own to the accompaniment of rhymes.

I wonder if this goes back to Regency and Georgian times.

[LouisaCornell]

Lovely post, Joanna! I was of the hula hoop generation and was once quite adept. Recent efforts, however, while full of enthusiasm did not impress my niece and nephews. I actually have a hula hoop and have been trying to use it as a form of exercise with varying degrees of success.

One game my brothers and I demonstrated that fascinated the kiddies was congers. There is nothing really like it in the States and my youngest brother still has a box of his congers almost 40 years later. And he STILL has custody of the champion conger of all time. (At least in the eyes of ourselves and our friends back in England!)

[joanna bourne]

Hi Louisa --

At some point I became less hula-hoop shaped, somehow. Oddly enough, I see them for sale every once in a while, but I never see anyone using one.

[deniz]

Great post, Jo!

I'd like to try a hoop and stick someday. I'm not very good at any of the others - yo yos, paddle balls, spinning tops... I think I should practice more often; I'm sure the dexterity might help me type even faster :-)

[joanna bourne]

Hi Deniz --

I have to admit, I could never do any of those tricks with yoyos.

The yoyo is apparently ancient. Classical Greek and so on. It was a fashionable amusement in the Regency and called a bandalore, perhaps from Tagalog.

Cool, huh?

[DandyLady]

Jacks, jacob's ladders, and Tiddly-winks...

[joanna bourne]

Y'know . . . you never see anybody playing tiddly-winks any more.

[Belstaff Jackets Sale]

I'd be interested in hearing. The TOS seems rather clear that it is not unless expressly approved by Amazon. I guess if the library got it in writing then they would be ok.