6. Diamonds, or cat's eyes.

7. Fish in dish.

8. Cradle, as at first.

The different orders or arrangements must be taken from the hands of one player by another without disturbing the arrangement.

Nares suggests that the proper name is "Cratch Cradle," and is derived from the archaic word cratch,' meaning a manger. He gives several authorities for its use. The first-made form is not unlike a manger. Moor (Suffolk Words) gives the names as cat's cradle, barn-doors, bowlinggreen, hour-glass, pound, net, diamonds, fish-pond, fiddle. A supposed resemblance originated them. Britton (Beauties of Wiltshire, Glossary) says the game in London schools is called Scratch-scratch, or" Scratch-cradle."

3

Amongst other Korean games Mr. Culin has investigated that known as Ssi-teu-ki, or " Woof-taking." It is practically identical with our cat's cradle, as is usually played by girls. The figures, which are the same as in our own children's play, are named as follows: (1) cover for hearse, (2) chess-board, (3) chop-sticks, (4) cow's eyeball, (5) rice-mill pestle.

In Japan cat's cradle is called aya ito tori-' woof pattern string-taking.' The figures are identical with those in Korea, but receive different names. (1) [?]; (2) nekomata, defined as a mountain cat, into which a domestic cat is supposed to trans

In the Century Dictionary the term cratch has two meanings, a grated manger," a rack or open framework."

2 Murray, in The New English Dictionary, does not support this etymology. 3 This account of the English game, with the references, is taken from Mrs. Gomme's "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland," i., Dictionary of British Folk-Lore, Part i., 1894, p. 61.

• Stewart Culin, Korean Games: with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan, Philadelphia, 1895, p. 30.

form itself'; (3) koto, a musical instrument, or geta no ha, the two pieces of wood under the soles of clogs; (4) umano me, horseeye; (5) tsuzumi, a musical instrument.

"In South China cat's cradle is called kang sok, which means literally well-rope.' It is spoken of as an amusement for girls, but is known to all Cantonese labourers. They make the same figures as those of Korea and Japan, but do not, they tell me, give them names. The order of the figures, after the first, is not necessarily that here given."

Miss Fielde' says that the Chinese of Swatow call cat's cradle" sawing wood," in allusion to the final act in the performance.

Dr. A. R. Wallace, the famous traveller, who formulated a theory of natural selection synchronously with Darwin, thus describes his finding this game in Borneo :

"One wet day in a Dyak house, when a number of boys and young men were about me, I thought to amuse them with something new, and showed them how to make 'cat's cradle' with a piece of string. Greatly to my surprise, they knew all about it, and more than I did, for, after I and Charles had gone through all the changes we could make, one of the boys took it off my hand, and made several new figures which quite puzzled me. They then showed me a number of other tricks with pieces of string, which seemed a favourite amusement with them."

Lieutenant de Crespigny writes of the Dusuns of Borneo : Near me were two children playing at 'cat's cradle exactly as I remembered to have played it in my own childhood.'

A Corner of Cathay, New York, 1894, p. 87.

2 A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, i., 1869, p. 183.

3 Proc. R. Geogr. Soc., ii., 1858, p. 344. Quoted from H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, i., 1896, p. 366.

The knowledge of this game was probably common to the members of the Polynesian stock before they separated into different groups, as we find it in the Eastern Pacific in Mangaia, one of the Hervey Group, and again, so far south as New Zealand.

Dr. W. Wyatt Gill,' the illustrious missionary of the Hervey Group, informs us that " cat's cradle (ai) was a great delight to old and young. Teeth were called into play to help the fingers. One complication, in which the cord in the centre is twisted into a long slender stem, and therefore called the coco-nut tree,' I have never known a European to unravel."

Two early travellers give us the following accounts of the game as it is played in New Zealand:

"He whai or maui.-The cat's cradle' is a game very similar to our own, but the cord is made to assume many more forms, and these are said to be different scenes in their mythology, such as Hine-nui-te-po, Mother Night bringing forth her progeny, Maru and the gods, and Maui fishing up the land. Men, canoes, houses, etc., are also represented. Some state that Maui invented. this game.'

"In the game of Maui they are great proficients. This is a game like that called 'cat's cradle' in Europe, and consists of very complicated and perplexing puzzles with a cord tied together at the ends. It seems to be intimately connected with their ancient traditions, and in the different figures which the cord is made to assume, whilst held on both hands, the outlines of their different varieties of houses, canoes, or figures of men and women are imagined to be represented. Maui, the Adam of New Zealand, left this amusement to them as an inheritance.'

1 W. Wyatt Gill, Life in the Southern Isles, 1876, p. 65.

3

9 R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants, London, 1855, p. 172.

3 E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, vol. ii., London, 1843, p. 32.

Tregear' also mentions the representation of Tawhaki (lightning) ascending to heaven.

These statements are very interesting, and suggest that we have here to do with some symbolism that has in course of time become obscured. On the other hand, Maui may be merely a pastime, and the string figures or designs may be nothing more than casual illustrations of the mythology of the natives. There do not appear to be sufficient data at present to settle this point.

Dr. Codrington' says: "Cat's cradle, in Lepers' Island lelegaro, in Florida honggo, with many figures, is common throughout the [Melanesian] Islands.

The Motu children of Port Moresby, in the south-eastern peninsula of New Guinea, are as well versed in the intricacies of cat's cradle as are our own."

66

I remember once going into a native hut in an island in Torres Straits, and seeing a little black boy playing with a piece of string, the two ends of which were tied together, in much the same manner as our children play at cat's cradle. The first figure that he made with it was precisely the same as our cradle," but the subsequent ones were different. He was greatly surprised when I picked the string off his hands to make "the soldier's bed," which I then transformed into the candles," back into the " reversed manger," and from that into "the diamonds," and so on. I found that a couple of natives did not play together as we do, “ taking off" from each other, but that usually each played separately. They can make much more elaborate devices than ours, and the process is correspondingly elaborate, and feet and teeth are at times pressed into service. On

'E. Tregear, "The Maoris of New Zealand," Journ. Anth. Inst., xix., 1889, p. 115. 2 The Melanesians, 1891, p. 341.

3 W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," Journ. Anth. Inst.. vii., 1878, P. 483.

the other hand, although many are extremely complicated in manipulation, the final result may be simple. The following are some of the forms I saw the natives make: A mouth; a coco-nut palm; liana, or some forest rope-like climber; a fish; a crow; a dog; crayfish, certain movements of the hands represented the motions of the living animal; a seasnake, which, when the hands were drawn apart, had an undulating movement, such as sea-snakes have in swimming through the water; one figure was intended for a canoe, without an outrigger, and another for one with an outrigger; one, by a stretch of the imagination, was said to indicate a family of one pickaninny (child), and yet another a family of two.'

Among the Australians, Eyre' remarks: String puzzles are another species of amusement with them. In these a European would be surprised to see the ingenuity they display and the varied and singular figures which they produce. Our juvenile attempts in this way are very meagre and uninteresting compared to them."

Professor E. B. Tylor,' who has noted some of the references I have just given, says, it is evident that the Dyaks and Maories did not learn it from Europeans, and though cat's cradle is now known over all Western Europe we cannot find any record of it at all ancient in our part of the world. It is known in South-east Asia, and he thinks that the most plausible explanation seems to be that this is its centre of origin, whence it migrated westward into Europe, and eastward and southward through Polynesia and into Australia. It would be interesting if it could be estab

1 A. C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits," Journ. Anth. Inst., xix., 1890, p. 361.

* Central Australia, ii., p. 229.

3 E. B. Tylor,

Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Games,"

Journ. Anth. Inst., ix., 1879, p. 26.