BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch

Subject: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 27 Feb 15 - 11:49 AM

My son and I were discussing children's physical games (as opposed to electronic, sedenentary games) of yore, specifically Hop-Scotch. I mention a name for the token we used to determine which square we had to hop to, pick up our token and hop back. Most often we used the link type key chain as a token. He had never heard the term I used to denote the token. I looked up the term online and in old fashioned print dictionaries without success. Perhaps this term was only used in SoCal, though I doubt it.

What term, if any, was used where you grew up playing Hop Scotch? I have purposely refrained from using this term, here, so as not to influence your individual memory. There is a form of this term used for other games. I will reveal all after a few responses. Perhaps I have a false memory of 65+ years ago?

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 27 Feb 15 - 01:50 PM

In my neck of the woods it was called a 'peever' and it was a Kiwi shoe polish tin filled with earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 Feb 15 - 03:08 PM

Outside of Chicago, we used a pebble, and we didn't call it anything. i suppose if we'd had to refer to it, we would have called it a little rock.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 27 Feb 15 - 04:03 PM

In the Backwoods of Lincolnshire, England, we used a small coloured cube with ridged indentations on four sides, which was made from wood or clay, and was called a 'snob'.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 27 Feb 15 - 05:58 PM

My recollection is that we here in the Los Angeles area called our tokens, whatever they actually were, a "lagger". Did others, anywhere, use that term?

We also pitched coins against a wall, the coin closet to the wall winning. We also were said to be "lagging" coins. Same with baseball cards...who knew if we just saved them, and kept them in pristine condition, some would become worth bo koo bucks thirty or forty years later?!

Finally, the only use I remember that I could find for "lag" "lagging" is the way to determine who has the break in billiards (pool).

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: akenaton
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 04:30 AM

"Pitch and toss"? You've had a bad start in life John. :0)

An old working class gambling game in Scotland.
The owner of the coin nearest to the wall picked up all the coins and "tossed" them designating "heads or "tails". He picked up the coins which landed the right way up and the remainder were "tossed" by the next nearest to the wall in the "pitch", then the next nearest until all the coins were "won".

Played it with half crowns many a time!

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Anne Lister
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 08:28 AM

Hopscotch? We each had a small stone or pebble, found when the game started. Nothing fancy. This was in various schools in southern England and Wales in the 1960s. It didn't get ennobled with a name!

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Noreen
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 09:12 AM

Same as Anne, in 1960s Liverpool. Great thing was you didn't need any equipment, just find a stone, scratch out the playing area on pavement or playground, and away you go.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Janie
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 09:17 AM

We also just used pebbles and called them rocks. Occasional arguments occurred over whose rock was who's. West central WV btw.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 12:08 PM

We would use a bunch of keys if anyone had such.
A stone or anything otherwise, but keys did not bounce or roll.

When we completed the course we could mark a square as our "wirly"
The owner could put both feet in but no-one else could step in it at all.
Anyone else play that version?

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Louie Roy
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 04:50 PM

In the 1930s My 3 sisters and I used small pieces of broken window glass to lag with and to pick up while hopping on one foot and each had a different name of our choice and was played on a dirt drawn version

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: akenaton
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 05:09 PM

"Peever" in W Scotland also.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 28 Feb 15 - 05:18 PM

We here in the Los Angeles area used all those things and more as our tokens in hopscotch, key chains, keys, coins (not so much as they were hard to pick up), stones, skate key, etc., but the encompassing term when used in the game was 'lagger'.

I see that Louie Roy, who is some years older than I if he was playing Hopscotch in the '30s, uses the term 'to lag with'. Maybe the term is remembered by (some) old folks, but fell out of usage later.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST,Ian
Date: 01 Mar 15 - 09:20 AM

Manchester Hop Scotch

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Megan L
Date: 01 Mar 15 - 10:43 AM

In Glasgow we played beds or peever using the shoe polish tin or a backy tin but we must have been posh,we used sand to weigh the tin. I remember our mums used to come out and play with us.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Rumncoke
Date: 01 Mar 15 - 11:28 AM

West riding of Yorkshire - Barnsley to be precise, to play - out of the house, was - is - layking.

The boys would go around the playground chanting 'Who's layking at aleee-vi-oh'

There were various versions of hopscotch. the one with a single square and then two side by side, where you hopped or straddled up and back down, not stepping into the square where the pick had been thrown. When in the square before the pick you hat to retrieve it without touching the ground and then continue, still not landing in the square. The pick had to be thrown into each square in numerical order.

In the other the numbers were drawn in two columns of three squares 123 in the left column and 654 in the rignt one. The stone or tin had to be flicked around the squares with the toe of the foot being hopped on, not going out of the squares and not skidding right across one.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Noreen
Date: 01 Mar 15 - 01:03 PM

I've only heard of the former, single then two side by side.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 02 Mar 15 - 12:05 AM

John On The Sunset Coast - golfers use the term "to lag" or "lag putt" when they want to putt the ball close to the hole in order to knock it in on the next putt.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 02 Mar 15 - 11:33 AM

Thanks, not a golfer, so didn't know that usage.

Whilst all the asides about the game of Hop Scotch, I still seem to be the only one here who has used the term 'lagger'. I note that most responses are from UK, which of course, uses a different language from the USA, although somewhat related. Don't jump on me...blame Lerner and Loewe via Shaw for that observation.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Mar 15 - 07:12 PM

now we're grown up. we could play hop scotch, with real scotch.....

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch -Lagger it is!
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 02 Mar 15 - 10:40 PM

Hey guys and gals...my memory has been vindicated regarding "lagger'. A woman with whom I play bridge, confirmed the use of that generic term for the hopscoth token, and did so without my prompting her so say. She is about my age + or -.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: meself
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 12:04 AM

We just called the token a 'man', as with the tokens in board games. In my elementary school, hopscotch was taken very seriously in the boys' playground, on a par with British Bulldog. Every top player had a 'man' that he swore by, and which was superior to the 'man' of every other player. Such a 'man' was cherished and guarded jealously. Every fall, there would be sort of a tournament that went on for about two months, till a champion was decided.

This was in Windsor, Ontario, in the 1960s. As far as I know, this passion for hopscotch was peculiar to our school.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 07:39 AM

Eilis Brady's classic book on Irish children's games, All In, All In, has a selection of hopscotch games that she calls 'beds'. She refers to the tin used as a throwing token as a 'pickey'. She offers several chalking patterns.
Someone's playing hopscotch these days in Harold's Cross Park - the chalked bed renewed day by day. I'm curious about who the children may be, since many of the kids who play in the park are children of African and Eastern European parents - lovely polite little ones they are, too. I'm wondering if a) it's the few children of Irish parentage, b) it's children who've learned the game here, or c) it's children who have brought the same familiar pattern from their homeland.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 08:04 AM

We called Hopscotch "Beds" too
Variations were ...
square beds (with 9 boxes)
oblong beds (with 6 boxes)
aeroplane beds(with 9 boxes shaped like a plane)

5 6
3 4
1 2

7 8 9
6 5 4
1 2 3

   9
7 8
   6
4 5
   3
   2
   1

Subject: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST,John Orford
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 08:59 AM

I've lived on the edge of a small town in the Southern Philippines for twenty years and they play hop-scotch here. I've never seen anything except a small stone used as a marker, nor in Leicester where I grew up, nor in South London where I lived for thirty-seven years. What's all this fancy equipment for?

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 09:29 AM

Funny thing: I'm (shh! don't tell!) 84 now. And, while hopscotch
was played in Minnesota, where I grew up, I never knew the
rules or procedures of the game until I read this thread just
this morning.

Why not? As far as I remember, it was "a girls' game". I don't
remember ever seeing boys playing hopscotch when I was a kid.

Similarly with jacks. I know the players bounced a ball and
tried to pick up some or all of the jacks while the ball bounced,
but I am to this day ignorant of any more detailed procedures.
Again, it was a girls' game, and I don't remember ever seeing
boys playing jacks.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: akenaton
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 10:49 AM

"Pal Lall" was the name of the game from the old Scots language site (mid 19th century)
Apparently the stones were the "peevers" and were used to draw out the beds.
Usually a girls game in Scotland in my childhood.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 11:28 AM

It is essentially a "girls' " game however I, like most of the boys on our street, joined in with the girls now and again and played hopscotch.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 12:58 PM

What baffles me is the way that games that are universal and beloved - like rolling a hoop or whipping a top in Victorian times - fall out of use utterly. Why? Why?

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: akenaton
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 01:43 PM

The curse of technology?

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: meself
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 03:03 PM

Hmmm ... what does it mean to say that something is "essentially a "girls' " game'? "Essentially"? In its essence? I don't understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 03:26 PM

By saying "Essentially" I meant it was mostly girls that played it when I was young.
I therefore, rightly or wrongly, see it is as a game for girls.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: meself
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 05:42 PM

Okay - I thought maybe you were casting aspersions on my manhood. Or boyhood.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 06:10 PM

Yeah, girls mostly played skipping games, jacks, hopscotch, cat's cradle, clapping games and what you might call social games, like The Farmer Wants a Wife and The Big Ship Sails Up the Illy-Alley-O, and Chip-chip-chopper-on-a-big-black-block, and some ball games like Queenie-i-o and One-Two-Three-O'Leary. Both boys and girls played tip-and-tig, Relievio, various ball games. Conkers were more of a boys' thing, as were marbles, though girls certainly did play them too. As far as I remember, boys and girls played card games together.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 03 Mar 15 - 06:35 PM

Three street games that we used played together (boys & girls) were "Ally Bally Who's Got The Ball", "Jack May I Cross The River" and the perennial "Hide & Seek" (similarly "Kick The Can")

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Mar 15 - 12:46 AM

i suppose times change. the girls used to have a rope right acoss the street an did skipping and calling in games. every now and then a car would come down the street, and the game would halt.

do kids defer to grown ups like that any more - there was a sort of implicit acceptance that the grown up world of cars took precedence.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Mar 15 - 04:32 AM

do kids defer to grown ups like that any more
try walking on the footpath (sidewalk) approaching a gaggle of kids!

I walk against the wall/hedge and that way they have to find their own methodology. They seem unable to walk in single file. Having said that it is not always yoof wot seem unable to talk to the back of their friend's head - or suspend conversation for 2 seconds.

As with driving standards: people get fed up of deferring to people who don't. I think this is in the same bag called "The Tragedy of the Commons".

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Thompson
Date: 04 Mar 15 - 06:20 PM

And tip-and-tig - both girls and boys played that together, though if the boys got rough and showoffy the girls would shrug and leave the game.
Do kids defer? Yeah, in Dublin they generally do; in Ireland they generally do. I was cycling down a suburban street the other day and three kids were messing with a rugby balll, passing it back and forth across the street. As soon as I came within 10 feet or so the one facing me called "Hold the ball" and the one the ball was heading for grabbed it and held it till I passed, thanking them, then they went on with their game.

Subject: RE: BS: Child Game - Hop Scotch
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Mar 15 - 03:40 AM

in Stroud, Gloucs, UK they played a form of Hide & Seek call Tin-I-Aki played variously with a tin (Kick the Can stylee) a brick or pebble (Kick the Stone).
And HopScotch.
1930's to 1950's - there are some recordings from older people of their youth StroudVoices.co.uk > games I may not have TAGged all the clips fully so try searching on "search by subject" page for HopScoth etc.

(try searching for "courting" too!!!!)