Ching, Ching, Chinaman, Oh! that's too dear; Clear out of here! Lemons and oranges, two for a penny, I'm a good scholar that counts so many. The rose is red, the leaves are green, The days are past that I have seen. I doot, I doot, My fire is out, And my little dog's not at home: Home, home again, home! Jenny, good spinner, Come down to your dinner, Look owre the kirk steeple, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, You are out! Around the house, arickity-rary, I hope ye'll meet the green canary : You say ay, I say no, Hold fast-let go ! Scottie Malottie, the king o' the Jews, When the shoes began to wear Scottie Malottie began to swear. In Dundee these lines are added to the " Eenity feenity" rhyme :— Jock out, Jock in, Jock through a hickle-pin. Eetle-ottle, black bottle; Eetle-ottle, out! This, more commonly used as a test of truth-telling (little fingers being linked while it is uttered), is also used on the East Coast as a counting-out rhyme : I ring, I ring, a pinky! If I tell a lie I'll go to the bad place White pan, black pan, Burn me to death, Tak' a muckle gully And cut my breath. Ten miles below the earth. But these all, of course, as already stated, have been delivered and acted, as they are still, rather as a prelude to the more elaborate games designed to follow than as a part of them, and to afford designedly the opportunity of deciding emphatically who shall be "it" or takkie." 66 CHILDREN'S RHYME-GAMES. WHEN by the aid of the "chapping-out" rhyme it has been decided who should be "it," the game to follow may be "Single Tig," "Cross Tig," "Burly Bracks Round the Stacks," "Pussie in the Corner," " Bonnety," "The Tod and the Hounds," "I Spy," "Smuggle the Keg," "Booly Horn," "Dock," "Loup the Frog," "Foot and a Half," "Bools," "Pitch and Toss," or any one of another dozen, all of which are essentially boys' games, and have no rhymes to enliven their action. But if it is to be a game in which both sexes may equally engage, or a game for girls alone, then almost certainly there is a rhyme with it. Somehow girls have always been more musical than boys, even as in their maturer years they are more frequently the subject of song than their confreres of the sterner sex. "Peever," "Tig," and 66 Skipping Rope," are indeed, so far as I can recall at the moment, about all of the girls' commoner games which are played without the musical accompaniment of line and verse. Their rhyme-games, on the other hand, are legion, and embrace “ A Dis, a Dis, a Green Grass," "The Merry-Ma-Tanzie," "The Mulberry Bush,” Carry My Lady to London," "I Dree I Droppit It," Looby-Looby," and ever so many more. 66 Like the counting-out rhymes, the game-rhymes are found in only slightly differing forms in widely divided countries and places. But ever alike, they are never The "Merry-Ma-Tanzie," for instance, quite the same. though always the same in name, will be found with varying lines in almost every town and village in ScotThere are variants equally, I suppose, of land even. all. of “ MERRY-MA-TANZIE" is solely a girls' game, which boys, however, may be interested spectators. The counting-out rhyme having put one in the centre, the rest join hands in a ring about her, and moving slowly round, they sing : Here we go round the jingo-ring, About the merry-ma-tanzie. Twice about and then · Then we fa', then ་ fa'. fa', Twice about and then we fa About the merry-ma-tanzie. Choose your maidens all around, Replying to this invitation, the one in the centre chooses two from the circle, and retires with them a Sweep the house ere the bride comes in, |