Boys:
“They are all too black and brawny,
They sit in the sun uncloudy,
With golden chains around their necks,
They are too black and brawny.”
Girls:
“Quite good enough for you, Sir!
For you, Sir—for you, Sir!
Quite good enough for you, Sir!
To the ransom tansom tidi-de-o.”
Boys:
“I’ll walk in the kitchen, and walk in the hall,
I’ll take the fairest among you all,
The fairest of all that I can see,
Is pretty Miss Watts, come out to me.
Will you come out?”
Girls:
“Oh, no! oh, no!
Boys:
“Naughty Miss Watts she won’t come out—
She won’t come out—she won’t come out;
Naughty Miss Watts she won’t come out.
To help us in our dancing.
Won’t you come out?”
Girls:
“Oh, yes! oh, yes!”[1]
(viii.)—Gathering Nuts away.
The players should be divided into two equal divisions (each from eighteen to twenty in number if possible), and between them should be drawn a mark or boundary line upon the ground. The two parties
- ↑ Mr. W. W. Newell, in his Games and Songs of American Children (New York, 1884), reviewed in Folklore Journal, vol. ii. p. 243, says that the “Knights of Spain,” which he gives as the American variant of this game, is still acted, not only throughout England and the United States, but also in Spain and Sweden, in Italy and Ireland, among the Baltic Finns and the Moravian Sclavs. He believes that it was originally based on the idea of a courtship conducted in the strictly mercantile spirit which probably pervaded the next stage of marriage-making after the primitive carrying off of the bride. Conf. also two variants in Shropshire Folklore, pp. 516, 517, called “The Knights of Spain,” and “Here come three Dukes a-riding.” See also Folklore Record, vol. iii. p. 170, for an Essex variant, and vol. v. p. 89, for a Welsh one. Also Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes, No. cccxxxiii.
