Sindhonia of Karpathos, one cotton and the other silk, and both embroidered very similarly in red and dark green. These are 2 yards deep; 18 inches at the bottom is more handsomely embroidered, and separated from the rest by a gold insertion 1 inches wide. In this island, where they have no bedsteads, they are used as wall hangings for festive occa sions. A Sindhoni of Niseros worked in brown, light yellow, and blue, and with a pattern resembling that of Karpathos. Two pillow covers from Karpathos, silk, with green and blue border on both sides, that they may show when the pillows are stored in piles. Two towels of Karpathos, cotton, with woven coloured ends. Two silk towels, one with coloured cotton ends, the other gold. All the house linen being hung on the rafters, these smart ones are hung over for show. A swaddling band from Karpathos, 150 years old, cotton closely worked with black and red silk on the outer end, and with a small sprigged pattern on the rest. Two towels from Samos with deep lace ends, partly needle and partly pillow. A cotton hood from Apeirenthos, in Naxos, with a border of blue and red cotton (birds), worn as a coal-heaver wears a sack. Some fine silk pillow lace from Crete. A sabouna (Zaumova), composed of a small pear-shaped gourd as mouthpiece, two reeds (one with a straw in it), and a goat's horn. A syravlion, or pan-pipe, from Paros. A whip from Mytilene, wooden handle, chain of twisted iron with four large rings on each link to warn mules of the long knotted thong. Two rokas, sticks, about a foot long, prettily carved, stuck in the waistband to support the left knitting needle. An eikon, given us in Mykonos to preserve from shipwreck. A gilded crab-shell, with St. Nicholas, the present "Ruler of the sea," painted in it. A bank-note, a card 14 inches square, covered with paper with the name of the Monastery of Spiliane and the signature of Kyrillos, the Prior, who issues them-legal tender in the Turkish island of Niseros. Two worth a penny: from Samos. A half-drachme piece, pierced, with little blue and white ribbons, Greek colours, tied through: given to friends at a baptism. DISCUSSION. Mr. REGINALD STUART POOLE Spoke of the great value of Mr. Theodore Bent's researches as a scientific effort to trace the evidence of the continuous existence of the Hellenic race. Such labours were no less valuable than the archæological explanation which accom panied them. In confirmation of the tenacity of the Greeks to their old customs, and the vitality of the race, Mr. Poole cited the remarkable fact observed by Mr. Flinders Petrie in Egypt, that the women of Naucratis, who reminded him of the Hellenic type, went unveiled, whereas the Shemite population of San (Zoan) were unusually strict for Egyptians in the custom of veiling. It was often carelessly alleged by the enemies of a race with great qualities, especially in domestic life, that their loss of the characteristic brightness of the ancient Hellenes was due to a Slav origin, whereas the centuries of Turkish oppression were enough to account for so natural a consequence. It may be added, as another illustration of continuity, that travellers agree in recording the zeal of the Greeks in education, and the care taken to provide schools even in the remotest villages. It is said that Greek girls at Athens, when engaged as servants, frequently stipulate for leave to attend lectures. With respect to the special bearing of the legends of Charon in modern Greece on ancient belief, Mr. Poole thought that Charon's horse might, as Mr. Bent suggested, be connected with the much debated appearance of the horse in Greek sepulchral reliefs. The following paper was read by the author: HISTORY of the GAME of HOP-SCOTCH. [WITH PLATE XVI.] It is a notorious fact that children's games are often imitations of the more serious occupations of the grown-up people they see around them, and that a game once introduced is handed down from generation to generation of children long after its original has ceased to exist. Thus children continue to play with bows and arrows though their parents have long ago discarded those weapons; and many innocent-looking children's games conceal strange survivals of past ages and pagan times. The game of Hop-Scotch' is one of considerable antiquity. As it is mentioned in Poor Robin's Almanac for 1667 it must have been a prominent game in England for several centuries; and it has spread over the whole of Europe, appearing under numerous aliases in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and other places. The main features of the game are too familiar to need description. An enclosure is marked off on the ground and 1 Probably a corruption of Hop-score.-Halliwell. divided into several courts. Through those the player, hopping on one foot, successively kicks a piece of stone, taking care not to touch with his foot any of the division lines, and avoiding certain prescribed courts, till the last one is reached, when he turns and kicks it out again in the same way. Signor Pitré attributes a solar origin to Hop-Scotch. The stone, he thinks, originally represented the sun, which is kicked through the courts as that luminary passes through the signs of the Zodiac. While Signor Pitre's opinion is entitled to high respect, his theory appears to me quite untenable; for it would require the number of courts into which the figure is divided to be twelve, whereas in no place where the game is played are there twelve main divisions, and very seldom can this number be made up even if subdivisions be reckoned. After examining a large number of figures collected from different parts of Europe, I find that the form of most frequent occurrence, and the one from which all the other varieties appear to have developed, is that of figs. 1 and 2, Plate XVI, where a rectangle is divided into six compartments and crowned by a seventh, and almost invariably semicircular court. This figure is still in use in many parts of Spain, Italy, and Portugal. As they acquired skill, children would very soon wish to render the game a little more difficult by complicating the figure. Thus we find at Venice, though the seven courts of fig. 1 are retained, a vertical line is drawn down the centre of the figure bisecting each court. Again, one court is often split into four by diagonals, as at Fregenal, Spain (fig. 3, Plate XVI), and La Marca, Italy (fig. 4). A figure with seven courts, one of which is split by diagonals, is also used in England. "When we wanted a really good game," an Irish lady writes me, after describing the figure used in her youth, "we used to draw all the lines double so as to make more courts." It is by some such process that fig. 8, Plate XVI (used in Mazzara, Italy), has been evolved. This figure contains nine courts, but it will be observed that the names of two courts occur twice, which points strongly to there having been originally only seven. So in fig. 7, used both in France and England, the extra court introduced between that marked Rest and Paradise appears to be the embodiment of an entirely separate figure 1 Pitré, "Guiocchi Franchuilleschi,” xxxvii. 2 The Italian, Spanish, and French varieties of the game are fully described in Pitré, loc. cit.; "Bibliotheca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas," tom. iii; Belèze, "Jeux des Adolescents." For the information as to the method of playing the game in different parts of the British Islands I am indebted to numerous correspondents, especially to Mr. G. H. Kinahan, of the Irish Geological Survey. 3.66 Loy's Handy Book of Games" (Ward, Lock & Co.), p. 12. |