I (spoil’d of Shakspeare’s line) take prose from Strutt.
The erudite historian of the “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England,” says, that “Merelles, or, as it was formerly called in England, Nine Men’s Morris, and also Fivepenny Morris, is a game of some antiquity.” He gives a figure of the “Merelle-table,” as it appeared in the fourteenth century, the lines of which are similar to those in the scheme of “Ninepenny Marl,” engraved with the account of the game communicated by *, *, P., with only this difference, that at each corner, formed by the angles and intersections, are black spots.
The game is played in France with pawns or men, made on purpose, termed merelles: hence the pastime derived that denomination. The manner of playing is briefly thus: two persons, each having nine men, different in colour and form, for distinction sake, place them alternately one by one upon the spots; and the business of either party is to prevent his antagonist from placing three of his pieces so as to form a row of three, without the intervention of an opponent piece. If he forms a row he takes one of his antagonist’s pieces from any part, except from a row, which must not be touched if he have another piece on the board. When all the pieces are laid down, they are played backwards and forwards in any direction that the lines run, but they can only move from one spot to another at one time. He that takes all his opponent’s pieces is the conqueror.
The rustic players of “Nine Men’s Morris,” in England, who draw their lines on the ground, make a small hole for every dot, and play in them with stones of different forms or colours. The pastime is supposed to have derived the appellation of “Nine Men’s Morris,” from the different coloured men being moved backwards or forwards as though they were dancing a morris.[560]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 38·70.
[557] The small cottage wherein Bewick was born, stands at a short distance from this village (Avingham.)
[558] It never continues longer than one day.
[560] Strutt.
December 31.
To December.
Ends, dull month, with thee;
Chilled his summer, dead his flowers,
Soon will his funeral be;
Frost shall drink up his latest breath,
And tempests rock him into death.
All his leaves have faded,
And his weary pilgrimage
Ends at last unaided
By his own sun that dims its ray,
To leave him dark in his decay.
In hollow sounds his doom,
While scarce a star its pale course steers
Athwart the sullen gloom;
And Nature leaves him to his fate,
To his grey hairs a cold ingrate.
Whose spring-flowers soon shall rise—
Fool, thus to shun an old friend’s bier,
Nor wisely moralize
On her own brow, where age is stealing
Many a scar of time revealing:—
Oceans driven from land,
Isles submerged, and dried up fountains,
Empires whelm’d in sand—
What though her doom be yet untold—
Nature, like Time, is waxing old!
New Monthly Magazine.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 37·50.
The Indexes to the Volume will end the Every-Day Book.
On taking leave, as Editor of this work, I desire to express my thanks for its favourable acceptation. It seems to have been regarded as I wished—a miscellany to be taken up by any body at any time. I have the pleasure to know that it is possessed by thousands of families of all ranks: is presented by fathers to their sons at school; finds favour with mothers, as suited to the perusal of their daughters; and is so deemed of, as to be placed in public and private libraries enriched with standard literature. Ascribing these general marks of distinction to its general tendency, that tendency will be maintained in my next publication,
The Table Book.
This publication will appear, with cuts, every Saturday, and in monthly parts, at the same price as the Every-Day Book, and will contain several original articles from valued correspondents, for which room could not be here made.
The first number and the present year will be “out” together. I gratefully remember the attachment of my friends to the present sheets, and I indulge a hope that they will as kindly remember me, and my new work.
The Table Book.
Heads, autographs, views, prose and verse selections,
Notes of my musings in a lonely walk,
My friends’ communications, table-talk,
Notions of books, and things I read or see,
Events that are, or were, or are to be,
Fall in my Table Book—and thence arise
To please the young, and help divert the wise.
December 23, 1826.
W. Hone.