The Change Islands Squidathlon is scheduled for Sunday, Aug 21, 2022. This annual event includes afternoon events that are reviving games played in the past on the island. This includes Change Islands style ball, piddly, and skittles. For more information check out the Squidathlon of Change Islands Facebook Page.
Change Islands style Ball (1:30pm) : A popular island game played more regularly in the past with local aspects such as no second base and no foul balls with the ball pictured below.
Change Islands style ball
Change Islands style bat and ball
Piddly (3pm) : Piddly, also known as Tiddly in some communities, will be back.
Skittles (3:45pm) : Peter Porter, Olde Shoppe Museum, as a young boy recalls seeing Skittles being played behind the SUF Hall. Rules in the old country vary however and we plan to reintroduce a version by a local replicating nine skittle pins similar to the one on display in the museum. As the ball aka cheese we have officially adopted the use of turnips.
Skittle pin from the Olde Shoppe Museum.
Recreated skittles pins, and a turnip for ball or cheese.
If you are interested in learning more about Piddly (also known as Tiddly) you can check out this short video from the 2017 Carbonear World Cup of Tiddly:
Today was the annual designation ceremony for the Provincial Historic Commemorations Program. This year, following a nomination made by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, Traditional Games of Newfoundland and Labrador was designated as a Cultural Tradition and Practice!
You can read a bit more about the designation here.
The photo above is courtesy of The Rooms Provincial Archives Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador (photo A 7-12). It shows children playing pitch and toss, Grey River. There is a description of the game in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English: "You stand away so far, an' you pitch your button. The handiest to the peg, after so many pitches [would win]. C 70-15 The object of the game was to pitch a button from the hole [where you stood] so that the button touched the 'nag' (or stick). C 71-22 Make a mot in the ground with your heel. Stand at a distance from the hole and pitch the buttons."
Thanks to Sharon King-Campbell for her work preparing the nomination files, and to Joy Barfoot and Laurie Roche Lawrence at the The Rooms, Judy Cameron with The Town of Carbonear's World Cup of Tiddly, Peter Laracy at Cupids Legacy Centre, and Jordan Brown, President of The Labrador Heritage Society Height of Land Branch, for their letters of support for this nomination!
Children Playing Circle Games VA 93-50 International Grenfell Association photograph collection Photo: Courtesy of The Rooms
While researching children’s ring games last week I came across a game which I had never heard before. The game “Sailing in the Boat (Ship) Till the Tide Runs High” is found in three sources on Memorial University’s DAI. It is first found in a fictional short story written in 1950 and published in the Atlantic Guardian in which the youth of the community Come Again Harbour play a ring game to the tune: Sailing in the ship ‘til the tide runs high,
Waiting for the pretty girls to come by and by, […] Choose your partner now today,
Give her a kiss and send her on her way. The other two sources mention the game being played in a community hall in Lumsden and the song being sung at the third annual Newfoundland picnic in Lynwood City Park, California in 1956.
I did a quick google search to see what I could come up with and I came across a couple of references to the ring game with more complete versions of the song. The following version is from Otto Tucker and is found in Newfoundland author Robin McGrath’s book All In Together:Sailing in the boat ’til the tide runs high, Sailing in the boat ’til the collar flags fly, Sailing in the boat ’til the tide runs high, Waiting for the pretty girls to come by and by. Choose your partner now today, Choose, oh choose her right away, I don’t care what the old folks say. Oh what a horrible choice you’ve made, And she can no longer stay. Since she can no longer stay, Give her a kiss and send her away.
There are a number of versions with different lyrics. Here is William Wells Newell’s version from his book Games and Songs of American Children: Sailing in the boat when the tide runs high,[x3]
Waiting for the pretty girl to come by'm by.
Here she comes, so fresh and fair,
Sky-blue eyes and curly hair,
Rosy in cheek, dimple in her chin,
Say, young man, but you can't come in.
Rose in the garden for you young, man,[x2]
Rose in the garden, get it if you can,
But take care not a frost-bitten one.
Choose your partner, stay till day, [x3]
And don't never mind what the old folks say!
Old folks say 'tis the very best way, [x3]
To court all night and sleep all day.
Folklorist Emelyn E. Gardner references the following version from the Michigan area in her article Some Play-party Games in Michigan written in 1920:
Sailing in the boat when the tide runs high, [x3]
Waiting for a pretty girl to come by and by.
Oars in the boat, and it won't go round [x3]
Till you kiss the pretty girl that you just found.
Do you have memory of this song? Have you ever played the game yourself? Which version did you sing? Let us know where you are from, what song you sung or game you played. Send an email to terra@heritagefoundation.ca.
I’ll leave you with the following YouTube clip I found of “Sailing in the Boat” sung by Elizabeth Austin and a group of women in Old Bight, Cat Island, Bahamas recorded by Alan Lomax and Mary Barnicle in 1935.
Terra Barrett looks on as Teresa Boland reads her original
poem, featured in Looking Back; Games We Played
Well, the sails have been hoisted: Looking Back; Games We Played has been launched - and what a launch it was!
About 35 people gathered at MacMorran Community Centre on Tuesday morning to hear speeches from Dr. Cory Thorne and Dr. Jillian Gould (MUN Department of Folklore) and student Jacquey Ryan, and a reading by participant Teresa Boland. Cake was cut, a game of hopscotch was played, and the booklets were passed around, signed, and admired.
If you weren't able to come out on Tuesday to pick up a hard copy of the booklet, never fear! Your local NL Public Library will be receiving a copy or two in short order, or click here to see the whole thing online.
Looking Back; Games We Played is the product of the Hoist your Sails and Run project, pairing senior tradition bearers with student folklorists to talk about games and pastimes.
This project has been funded by the Government of Canada's New Horizons for Seniors Program.
When it comes right down to it, stories are what many of us value the most. When we walk into a centuries-old home, we think "If these walls could talk, what stories would they tell?" Our most cherished moments are remembered as stories.
The best thing about stories is that they multiply in value when shared. It's fun to tell a story, and fun to hear one. Storytelling has been around since humans came up with language.
Today is World Storytelling Day, an global celebration of the art of oral storytelling, recognized every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. You can read more about it here.
In honour of this day, I want to share my very first oral history interview ever, and the first interview in the Hoist your Sails and Run project (available on the DAI here). I spoke with Winston Fiander, from Portugal Cove-St. Philips, over Skype, and amid descriptions of games he used to play, he told me a couple of particularly notable stories.
To hear how his father rescued a stranded fisherman, go to 15:28.
To hear how he got up to mischief with a homemade slingshot and got away with it, go to 28:10.
And don't forget to check out Looking Back; Games We Played - the published result of the Hoist your Sails and Run project - set to launch Tuesday, March 24th.
Memorial University’s Folklore department has teamed up with the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador to launch Looking Back; Games We Played, a booklet exploring the childhood games of Newfoundland’s past.
Folklore graduate students spent the month of February with seniors at the MacMorran Community Centre to discuss the games they played as children, and to partake in a few of those games together. During the weekly gatherings at the community centre, the games remembered ranged from the classic Hide and Go Seek, to Cat’s Cradle, to sliding on pieces of wooden barrels or car bonnets in the winter months.
Looking Back; Games We Played documents the interviews and memories of childhood play that the students collected. The booklet will launch at the MacMorran Community Centre at 10am on March 24th, 2015. Refreshments will be available and there will be games to be played!
This project has been funded by the Government of Canada's New Horizons for Seniors Program.
For more information, please contact:
Andrea McGuire
(709) 771-2216 andrea.mcguire@hotmail.com
On Tuesday, Peter Laracy took some time out to talk to us about having fun when he was a kid. Here he is at the beautiful Cupids Legacy Centre, telling us a story about getting from his home in Cupids to Harbour Grace to play on the hockey team.
Peter's interview was part of the Hoist your Sails and Run project about traditional Newfoundland and Labrador play and games. If you're interested in knowing more about this project, please give me a call at 739-1892 ext 3 or email me here.
Sandra Antle (second from left) tells onlookers Don Antle, Andrea McGuire, Sharna Brzycki and Marg Connolly about a game she used to play. Photo by Jillian Gould
During the final Hoist your Sails and Run session, tradition-bearer Sandra Antle set down to remember some of the songs that she and her friends used to sing. Rhymes were part of skipping, clapping, and ball-bouncing games. She remembers this one about quarreling mothers:
My mother and your mother Lived across the bay, And every night they picked a fight And this is what they'd say: Icka Backa Soda Cracka Icka Backa Boo Icka Bakca Soda Cracka Out goes you.
And this rhyme with a nautical theme:
I'm a little Dutch girl Dressed in blue. Here are the things I Like to do; Salute the Captain; Bow to the Queen; Turn my back On the submarine.
Some circle games require the players to reenact the song. Take, for example, The Farmer in the Dell: The farmer in the dell, The farmer in the dell, Hi-ho, the daireo, The farmer in the dell, The farmer takes a wife... The wife takes a child... The child takes a dog... The dog takes a bone...
At the beginning, one person - the "farmer" - stands in the middle of the circle, and then chooses a "wife" to come stand in the circle with them. The "wife" chooses a "child," and so forth. As the song continues,
The farmer leaves the wife... The wife leaves the child... The child leaves the dog... The dog leaves the bone...
the players step back into the outer circle one by one as they are called. Finally the player who has been chosen as "the bone" is left in the middle and the game can begin again.
What rhyming or singing games do you remember?
The launch of the booklet Looking Back; Games We Playedwill be at MacMorran Community Centre at 10am on Tuesday, March 24th. All are welcome. Please be in touch with me at 739-1892 ext 3 or by email for more details on the Hoist your Sails and Run project.
This past Tuesday was our third and final session playing and talking about games at MacMorran Community Centre. While the folklore students peeled off to finish their interviews with tradition bearers, the rest of us took advantage of the pack of jacks, tiddlywinks and pick-up sticks that were brought in.
The knack of jacks came back to Martha Oliver pretty quickly. In fact, she schooled us with her opening moves. The trick in the video below was to determine who got to go first... whoever dropped the fewest jacks had the advantage.
Jacks, she said, was mostly played on the floor indoors, where the ground was flat and the ball wouldn't bounce off in unpredictable directions.
Also done indoors, especially in the lead-up to Christmas, was the making of paper dolls or paper angels. We found some paper, borrowed some scissors from the grown-ups in the office, and made a ton of them.
Student Sharna Brzycki displays her first paper angels. Not bad for a first try!
The students are now hard at work putting together for the content for Looking Back; Games We Played, the booklet that will come from these sessions and interviews. Keep an eye out for a launch coming up soon!
I wrote an article in The Telegram a while back about traditional Newfoundland children's singing games. It included a version of "King William was King George’s son."
Colin Burke, now of Port au Port, sent me his version, which was sung in St. Jacques, Fortune Bay, circa 1950-1952.
King William was King George’s son, Of all the royal race he’d won. Upon his breast a star he wore Pointing to the government’s door * Come choose you east, come choose you west, Come choose the one that you love best. Down on this carpet you must kneel As the grass grows in the field, Kiss your partner if you please Now you may rise up off your knees.
Burke notes:
* (or maybe government store, which is what I seemed to hear)I was about six or seven years old, and there was a “government store” at the government wharf.
The King William in question is probably William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) - King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death, the third son of George III. The image above is William in dress uniform painted by Sir Martin Archer Shee, c.1800, from the book The National Portrait Gallery History of the Kings and Queens of England by David Williamson
UPDATE: 6 March 2015
Gloria Marguerite Bobbitt from Harrington Harbour, on Quebec's Lower North Shore, writes:
The people from Newfoundland must have brought the song/game over to Harrington Harbour when they came over here. We always played it in the summer time. Here is our version.
King William was King George's son, Upon the royal racy run, Upon his breast he wore a star, In the kissing time of war. Come choose to the east, Come choose to the west, Choose the very one you love best. Upon this carpet you must kneel, As sure as the grass grows in the field, Kiss your partner as your sweet, Now you may stand upon your feet.
A picnic in May 1958. Ethel Benson with children Olga Pippy, Carol Clancy and Sandra Antle. Photo courtesy of Sandra Antle.
Last week, as part of our Hoist your Sails and Run project, MUN Folklore students paired off with community participants for interviews, the fodder for the content of the upcoming booklet. While they were at that, the rest of us entertained ourselves by looking at old pictures, and playing with string and marbles, remembering the ins and outs of Cat's Cradle and Chip Chip (where one person holds a certain number of marbles in their closed hand and the other has to guess how many).
One of the students had thought to bring in some painter's tape, so that we could mark on the ground without spoiling MacMorran Community Centre's gym floor, and it didn't take us very long to get a round of Hopscotch going!
This Tuesday was in the midst of MUN's midterm break, but we're back at it next week! Keep an eye out for updates as we put the booklet together!
I recently wrote an article for The Telegram on singing games we used to play, about three traditional games: "Little Sally Saucer," "King William was King George's Son," and "Ring Around the Rosie." You can read more on "Little Sally" on author Leslie Lindsay's blog.
This morning, I received a response from Rosemary Thorne. Thorne now lives in St. John's, but was born in the early 1960s in Thornlea, Trinity Bay. She remembers playing Little Sally Saucer and Ring Around the Rosie.
Another song game she remembered was "Here we go down, Sir Johnny Brown," but she could not remember all the lyrics to the first verse of the song. Here is what Thorne remembers:
Here we go down, Sir Johnny Brown This is the way to London town .... here .... by Don't you hear your true love cry
On the carpet (carver?) here she stands Take your true love by the hand [Take] the one that you love best Pick her out from all the rest
What a heck of a choice you made You better be home and in your bed Since you can no longer stay Give her a kiss and send her away.
A quick internet search reveals little on "Sir Johnny Brown," but does turn up this fabulous query to the "Correct Manners" section on Page 13 of the Ottawa Citizen, for Monday, 1 February 1926:
Is the letter in question addressed to a real child named John Brown, or would Sir Johnny Brown be a name known to a child, presumably through some version of the rhyme related by Thorne? Does anyone have a memory of this rhyme or song? Any thoughts on the missing words? And who exactly is Sir Johnny Brown, Esq?
Email me at ich@heritagefoundation.ca if you have a lead! And I'll have none of your "monkey-shining," please.
update 9 Feb 2015:
I found this counting-out rhyme, from Indiana, printed in 1888 in "The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children: Their Antiquity, Origin, and Wide Distribution - a study in Folk Lore" by Henry Carrington Bolton (noted American chemist, bibliographer of science, lecturer, folklorist, photographer, and one of the founders of the American Folklore Society):
Oh! Johnny Brown He went to town Three score miles and ten; He went at night By candle light And never got home again.
On Tuesday, February 3rd, Hoist your Sails and Run got off to a fine start. Folklorists and folklore students met with 8 tradition-bearers at MacMorran Community Centre to talk about where they grew up, what their neighbourhoods were like, and how they used to have fun.
We talked about alleys (marbles), jacks, skipping rope, Bonfire Night, and getting up to mischief. We shared memorable Christmastime traditions, remembered the old shops in downtown St. John's, and the events they found most exciting as children. Teresa Boland remembers watching for the Peanut Man: a man dressed head to toe as a peanut with a top hat and monocle who delivered bags of salted peanuts to waiting children on special occasions.
We even played a few schoolyard games ourselves, and we topped the morning off with a delicious lunch of sandwiches and chicken soup, made by Marg Connolly, who has lived in the community for 77 years.
Next week, we'll meet again to look over childhood photos, and the folklore students will pair off with tradition bearers to do the interviews that will become the content for the booklet. Keep an eye on this blog for updates as we start to put the pieces together!
It's here! It's here! Hoist your Sails and Run is about to take off!
On Tuesday, we introduced Jim Crockwell of the MacMorran Community Centre to the MUN Public Folklore Class. Jim gave us a great presentation about the history of the centre, the services they offer, and the community that avails of them: all useful context for the students about to go in. We covered some last-minute logistics and questions, and we are ready to go! Hoist your Sails and Runbegins this Tuesday, February 3rd! Watch this space for updates as we start the conversation about play and games with tradition-bearers!
If you're interested in joining us or in sharing your memories of play and games, please contact me at 739-1892 ext 3 or by email.
In the January 2015 edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update newsletter: Alanna Wicks invites youth aged 18-35 to the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador's first Youth Heritage Forum, set for March 7th, 2015 in St. John's; Sharon King-Campbell interviews Berkley Reynolds about his memories of growing up in Salmon Cove, as part of the Hoist Your Sails and Run games research project (including a fabulous story about cheating time in order to squeeze in an extra hour of cards); Memorial University of Newfoundland is seeking organizations who would be willing to host interns through the Department of Folklore's public folklore co-op MA programme; and Dale Jarvis provides an overview of the Fisheries Heritage Preservation Program and its work to safeguard the vernacular architecture of the traditional fishery in the province.
In December, I asked Vida Edwards about indoor games she
played when she was growing up in Trout River. This was her answer:
“Let’s face it, when
you’re growing up in Newfoundland and you have a little small house and it’s
six and seven kids and the house is probably I’m thinking maybe 900 sq feet,
you don’t have a lot of space, (…) you don’t want to be inside.”
She has a point: indoor space was at a premium. So some
children built themselves some outdoor space that still provided a bit of
shelter from our fine Newfoundland weather.
The Dictionary of Newfoundland English has an entry for just
such a structure; “copy house” is defined as “a little house built by children.”
Paula Roberts remembers one in particular in Clarenville:
“We built a fort up behind Randy’s house and I remember he
was nailing from the top and I was nailing from in the fort, and I stood up and
one of the nails wasn’t driven in and I drove the nail into my head.”
Aside from that memorable incident, Paula and her
friends spent most of their time pretending to be baking, making mud cakes and
serving them to guests on plates made of wooden planks.
In the winter, of course, the building materials changed,
but the idea was the same. Paula recalls digging out from mounds of snow left
in their yard by the plow. She says,
“Building snow forts was mostly what we would spend our time
at. In the same area that you’d be making up the mud cakes and everything in
the summer, you’d be building snow forts, and creating benches, and everything.”
Winston Fiander’s snow houses in Coomb’s Cove were even more
sophisticated.
“We used to make the walls perpendicular, and then we’d get
pieces of lumber and put across the top, and put snow on top of the lumber,” he
said. They’d care for and maintain their houses all winter long, and hope that
it stayed cold.
“Of course you had to be careful now when you got a mild
spell because the thing would collapse on ya. Weren’t allowed to go in there.”
If you built a play or copy house, or a snow house, and would like to share your memories, please consider participating in the Hoist your Sails and Run project (see here), filling out our online survey (here), or contacting me at 739-1892 ext 3 or by email here.
I bet you have. I bet you've made a kite, or a spinning top, or a model boat. I bet you've tied a loop of string for Cat's Cradle, or picked out a good stick for a bat before playing ball.
I made a top out of paper this morning.
See? It spins and everything!
A few decades ago, in most of this province, toys weren't available in stores year round, if ever. Kids had to make their own.
Winston Fiander grew up in Coomb's Cove, Fortune Bay, and he had a few tricks up his sleeve when it came to making his own fun.
"We used to make these slingshots. (...) you'd take a piece of line (...) looped, and in the base of that loop would be a couple of pieces of line where you could support a rock. And so we would have it rigged so that you put your finger through a loop in the end of the line, and you caught a hold of the line with your finger and thumb, and you just put a rock in it, and you'd wind it round and round and round and then you'd let it go. (...) And it would go, geez, it's amazing how far the rock would go."
When we got to talking about hockey, he told me he and his friends had a puck to play with, but they made their own sticks.
"We used to make them out of wood. Well, you know how they used to make timbers for boats (...) you just go into the woods and you find a stick that looked like a hockey stick (...) bent already and you chop it off and bring it home and shave it down a bit and there you are, you got a hockey stick."
Paula Roberts, from Clarenville, did some quite ambitious building with her friends:
"Somebody threw out a baby buggy once, and I remember... we took the wheels off of that and made the wickedest go-carts."
And then, they hit the jackpot of scavenged building (and bouncing) materials.
"Somebody had thrown out a mattress, and we tore the mattress apart, and all the springs that were inside the mattress, we took and attached them to our feet, and made like bungee, springy things. (...) I'd say for about two weeks we were occupied by tearing up that mattress. But the wood that was inside the mattress we used for the go-carts."
If you'd like to take part in ICH's Hoist your Sails and Run project, or talk to us about toys or game equipment that you once made, please drop me a line here or by phone at 739-1892 ext 3.
It's a snowy old day here in St. John's, and as I watch the snow blow in diagonals from the warm side of the windows in the quiet ICH office (Dale is being an Intangible Cultural Heritage rock star in ASIA, and I'm sure he'll tell you all about it when he gets home), I am thinking about how much I used to love weather like this. You remember: back when the snow meant sliding and snowmen and forts and snowball fights, instead of shoveling the driveway 3 times in a 24-hour period and falling down twice (TWICE!) on your way in to work.
The view from ICH today. Good luck out there, City of St. John's truck.
But then I got excited, because I realized that the good old days I was just thinking of are some of the same days that we get to talk about in the Hoist your Sails and Run project, and that project is just ramping up!
I've been doing some interviews with the folks who have already filled out our survey about play and games (you can too! Click here), and I haven't had one yet where we didn't talk about sliding. Everyone seems to remember sliding on the perfect hill, whether they were on a wood slide borrowed from their father, or a discarded plastic bag, or a pilfered pizza pan.
We're going to be meeting on Tuesday mornings in February at MacMorran Community Centre, and talking about sliding and any number of other ways we used to play!
If you're interested in becoming a part of this project, please email me or be in touch by phone at 709-739-1892 ext 3, and tell me your sliding memories!
In the December 2014 edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update for Newfoundland and Labrador: the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) explores membership with the Inter-City Intangible Cultural Cooperation Network (ICCN); some thoughts on placemaking; the Outer Battery’s Charles Pearcey is designated as a Provincial Tradition Bearer; HFNL Announces Three Fisheries ICH Projects in Cupids, Pouch Cove, and Labrador; and Sharon King-Campbell declares war! (Don't worry, it is just a game.)
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