Pastimes in past times (From Gazette & Herald)

Pastimes in past times

THOSE who are fortunate enough to spend a few hours at the Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole, will experience several emotions - pleasure, wonderment, nostalgia.

Perhaps, for the older generations, there may be the additional benefit of a nudge in the ribs of memory or an illuminating moment when a connection is made which links our past and our present.

For young people too, there is the fun of recognising familiar things in a setting which belongs to history. Indeed, history comes alive in the study of quite ordinary objects, whose intrinsic worth rests in the fact that once they were part of the daily life of our forebears, and now add richness and colour to our heritage. One of the more fascinating, if smaller, collections at the folk museum is that devoted to toys, games and other pastimes of children living in Ryedale. Many of their occupations and playthings were, of course, in general use. But there is a particular interest in the study of this collection, which can reveal to the sensitive observer intimate details of a lifestyle both lost in time and yet immediately familiar.

Some of the games once in common use in Ryedale are still available, such as the board game 'Merrills', a game of skill in which three pieces in a line form a 'Mill'. By a series of cunning moves, players try to force an opponent out of play by blocking moves and removing pieces. The world championship was played annually in Ryedale.

Then there is the ancient game of Nine Men's Morris, popular in the far distant past as a shipboard game. Examples have been found, carved in wood, in a Viking burial ship (AD 870) and on a barrel-top in the Mary Rose.

In Elizabethan times, it was a favourite board game or played on a sandy surface or cut into the turf. In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, there is a reference to it - 'The nine men's morris is filled up with mud'.

The idea of an outdoor board game to be played in public is continued nowadays in the use of giant chess sets, displayed in public parks or in gardens like that in Burton Agnes. Other games such as snakes and ladders are still enjoyed, whilst the 18th century volleying game of Battledore and Shuttlecock has developed into badminton.

Ball games and outdoor games were popular among country children. Marbles or Haws, known elsewhere as Ollies, could be played with small rounded stones; the colourful glass marbles were treasured possessions and could be swapped for more desirable ones.

Skipping was not just a girls' game. It could be highly competitive and was often performed as a singing game; the children singing rhymes to the rhythm of the turning rope. One of the great competitive games held in Ryedale was that of egg-rolling at Easter time. A suitably sloping field was used, courtesy of a local farmer. Hard-boiled eggs were rolled down from the top of the slope amid much scrambling and shouts of encouragement to see whose egg would reach the finishing line first.

In Helmsley and Sproxton, these races, sometimes held on Easter Saturday, made a great family day-out; sometimes, as in Sproxton, egg-rolling would be followed by a picnic in which the whole village community shared.

Among the Ryedale Folk Museum's memorabilia of childhood can be found all kinds of games and toys, having an educational purpose - from picture books and alphabets and building blocks, to jigsaw puzzles and rhymes and riddles to test memory and comprehension.

Nursery rhymes have an everlasting appeal and there were other songs and verses commemorating individuals or events. For example, Baa Baa Black Sheep refers to an export tax on wool, levied in 1275. Do children today sing such songs as 'Where have you been all the day, Bill Boy?' Or 'Lavender's blue, dilli, dilly, lavender's green' or 'I had a little nut tree' or 'Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea'?

Rhymes and riddles were learned and passed on in an oral tradition stretching back through the centuries. Just as sea shanties were sung to help sailors at the windlass, so country pursuits too had their won rhymes, for example, 'See-saw, Margery Daw,/Jacky shall have a new master,/He shall have but a penny a day,/Because he can't work any faster'.

This was a sawyer's rhythm and cleverly reproduces the momentum of the physical action.

We all know the rhyme about Tom, Tom the piper's son, who stole a pig. In fact, the 'pig', as you will learn in the folk museum, was a sweetmeat, made of pastry stuffed full with currants and dried fruits. Children delighted in their skill in repeating tongue-twisters, such as:

'Betty Butler bought some butter

But she said -

"The butter's bitter,

If I put it in my batter

It will make my batter bitter.

But a bit of better butter

It will make by batter better."

So she bought a bit of butter

Better than her bitter butter.

And the batter was not bitter.

So 'twas better Betty Butler

Bought a bit of Better Butter.' (Copied from the original in the museum.)

There were fortune-telling rhymes like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor and prophesies about the weather - Red Sky at Night, Shepherd's Delight.

Then there were riddles, the more obscure the better and often related to objects of nature or to seasons. A favourite one concerned the roasting of chestnuts: 'Black I am and much admired,/Men seek for me until they're tired./When they find me, break my head/And take me from my resting bed.'

This eclectic collection of toys, games and pastimes, enjoyed by generations of Ryedale children, evokes images of boys and girls at leisure and throws light on their seasonal recreations.

When outdoors, they might be skipping, flying kites, bowling hoops or whipping wooden tops; while indoors they might have puzzles, or models of domestic tools, a doll's house or a rocking horse to play with. Girls would practice their knitting or tatting, while boys became skilful at whittling; and both would play hand games with string, such as Cat's Cradle.

Many toys survive, including crudely-coloured animals in a home-made Noah's Ark, and, of course, some much-loved dolls made of rags or wood. But do you know about the 'Service Doll'? This was a shape made by knotting father's handkerchief. It proved useful in amusing the little ones during a long and tedious sermon in church on Sunday.

Whether practical, educational or amusing, all these ephemera have their place in our history and still own the power to move us. Our memories are refreshed as we recall our own childhood, through the mysterious reflections and resonances astir in the folk museum at Hutton-le-Hole.

In writing this short piece about pastimes of children in Ryedale, I have had the generous help of the curator and staff of the museum, to whom I express my gratitude.

NEVIS YOUNG

Updated: 16:03 Wednesday, April 09, 2003