venta | Howway...

Howway...

A quick survey about junior school games, for those who can remember that far back.

Yesterday, with half an eye on the rugby, I commented that parts of it were pretty much indistinguishable from an extended game of Pile On.

The basic principle of which is, you push someone over, shout "Pile On!" and then pile as many people on them as possible.

onebyone fixed me with his special "you're a weird Northerner" gaze, and told me that the game was, and always has been, called Bundle.

Any offers? I suspect I may be relying on

jiggery_pokery to back me up here.

My mum agrees that it was definitely Pile On in her day, my dad appears to have gone to too refined a school to do such things. They did comment, however, on there being a big regional variation on what you say when you're playing some game like Tiggy[*] and for some reason, such as injury, require not to be tiggable for a while.

Round our way saying "kings" (and crossing your fingers) rendered you untouchable... for a while. Anyone suspected of overusing it probably got Piled On. I'm sure someone's probably done proper etymological research into all this, but how could it possibly be better than the answers of a self-selecting LJ readership?

[*] or Tag, if you're a southern jessy.

Oh, and my Designated Hero for the Week (DHW) this week is also

onebyone. Though I'm ashamed to admit I've completely forgotten why. I quite like the idea of a DHW, I shall try and keep it up.

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Afraid that I was always one of the quiet kids who kept out of the way of such games, lest I ended up as stooge. :-) The phrase "all pile on" certainly rings bells in this context, however.

I've also got a strange and almost monotonous junior school chant running through my head at this point: "All join on if you want to play <game name>. No girls allowed{, except optional list}." Mmm... maybe that was infant school, not junior school.

"All join on if you want to play . No girls allowed{, except optional list}.

Yup, remember that. Though I don't remember there being a name to it. It might have been called "no girls allowed" :)

Interestingly in Clwyd I think we would have called it "Tig", probably indicating that we're a weird no-man's-land spurned by both Northerners and Southerners as inferiors.

I like the idea of a DHW. I take it that the title isn't actually an honorific based on actual actions, but rather implies that, in the event that a hero is needed, it'll be

onebyone who has to step into the breach (and sacrifice his life if necessary)?

I take it that the title isn't actually an honorific based on actual actions, but rather implies that, in the event that a hero is needed, it'll be onebyone who has to step into the breach

No, it is awarded post-heroism, the post once held is something of a sinecure. Any intra-breach-stepping done by

onebyone this week will be purely voluntary.

Tsk! You'll be telling me that a Designated Driver should be bought lots of rounds by his friends in the pub to reward him for his excellent prior driving, next.

Yep, and awarding American servicement Purple Hearts if and only if they promise to deliberately leap into the line of fire at some point in the future.

Actually, the confusions might be down to the fact that venta in fact nominated me DHW for *last* week, not this week.

I can't remember why, either.

Nah, it's like the FA cup. You win it last week, but then you're the holder of it for the next week :)

Aassuming someone is suitably heroic, there'll be another one along next weekend.

Pile on was played a lot around our way. Once even with a teacher, though that was somewhat accidental, and the teacher was most unimpressed with it.

What you foolishly call Tiggy is of course chasing.

We didn't have anything resembling this strange 'pile on' thing, which seems to me to bear no resemblance to an actual game. We had things like Red Rover and British Bulldog.

Also, where I lived it was 'It'. 'Tag' to us was what posh people said in the 50s. That having been said, we did use 'pax' where you used 'kings', although we had no idea what it meant, it was just another meaningless kid-word.

I went to public school, you know.

We played Bulldog as well, though not Red Rover. When I was an infant, the old kids played Red Rover, but when we got older we discovered none of us had the faintest clue how one played it or what the rules were.

We did play a game myseriously titled Polio, though.

I don't remember the rules for British Bulldog at all, which I've always been sad about, but I remember Red Rover very clearly. You form two long lines, holding hands, then team A chant 'Red Rover, Red Rover, let (insert name on team B) come over'. The person picked has to charge at full pelt at team A's line, specifically at which ever link she thinks is weakest, because her objective is to break through it. If she can't break through it, then she has to join team A. The game is won when all but one person is on one line.

Incidentally, did you have Kitpost? Probably a corruption of Kickpost, I think, I guess people used to kick the post to be safe. It was like It, but much cooler because it involved sneaking around in the woods trying to creep up on the Kitpost. One person (who is 'it') has to guard the kitpost, while the others try to reach it in order to be safe for the next round. The person guarding catches people by spotting them and calling out their name and where they are, but she has to be touching the kitpost in order to do so. They're then out for the round and go and hold onto the post. And the next person caught hangs on to them, etc, so that as time goes on others have a better chance of reaching the post because they can touch the end of the chain instead of the post. And whoever is spotted first is it next time. I loved that game.

Polio rings a bell, but I can't think why.

Then there was Mother May I, which just sucked.

Bulldog:

To be played on a rectangular thing, eg a playground.

Everyone stands at one end, except the person who is on, who stands in the middle.
Person in middle shouts "Bulldog", at which point everyone runs to the other end of the playground.
Person in middle tries to catch as many people as possible on the way past.
Anyone caught then joins the person in the middle as catchers for the next go.

Winner is the person caught last... of course, it becomes increasingly difficult to run from one end to the other as the number of catchers begins to outnumber the catchees.

The distinction we drew was:
Bulldog - you tig someone to catch them
British Bulldog - you pick someone up to catch them (we were banned from playing this at school)

I remember the chant from Red Rover, now I know how it works, too :)

Polio:

To be played (for preference) between two close-together walls, but these aren't necessary.

All players form a line against one wall, except the person who is on who stands by the other wall. We'll call the person who is on A for convenience :)

A chooses a category (colours, breeds of dog, countries), and tells the line. Each person in the line chooses a thing from that category, the person on the end of the line relays all the choices A. A then calls one out, and the person who chose that races across to the other wall and back. A also races (in the opposite direction) to the wall and back. The first person back shouts "Polio".

If A wins, they join the line and the loser becomes the person on. If A loses, they must shout out another choice (or the same one again) and race again....

Mother May I?

Ah yes, I think we did have Polio. Mother May I is vaguely similar, but so much more boring. 'Mother' stands at one wall, back to the others. The others line up against the other wall. Mother calls out criteria and actions, eg 'anyone wearing red take two steps forwards'. The person who reaches her wall first wins, the furthest back is Mother for the next round. That's the basics though at some point people called out 'Mother may I', and I forget the details. As I said, it was very dull.

British Bulldog got banned at our school as well: we used to play it on the hard tennis court, so not only did it really hurt when you fell, but there was a good long run up and so contact was made at great speed. It was very violent. I loved it. As I recall you had to do more than touch someone, you had to actually grab them and stop them running on, in practice jumping on them and pinning them to the ground!

you had to actually grab them and stop them running on

This is kind of what venta is suggesting as the the difference between Britsh Bulldog and any other kind of Bulldog. It sounds very dull to play it just with tagging. The way we played in Scouts you did have to lift people fully off the ground to count as catching them (so the first person in had to be someone largish). There was a rule that if two or more people co-operated to lift someone, then the one at the head end had to make sure he let go last.

That's the kind of safety conscious rule that you only find in the scouts!

Oh yes, it was a "rule of scouts" rather than a "rule of the game". If you were dropped on your head it was still a valid catch, it's just that the people who dropped you were in trouble.

Based on my recollection, the three terms are parts of the same game...

The game itself is "Tig", but the verb is "to tag" and the person most recently tagged is "It". Kid language being what it is, you're likely to get a mixture of all three used in all kinds of ways even within the same playing group.

Oh - and I never realised 'bundle' was a game. Where I grew up it was a form of warfare (we fought a lot in the playground).

The game itself is "Tig", but the verb is "to tag" and the person most recently tagged is "It".

Nah, the game is "Tiggy", the verb is "to tig", and the person most recently tigged is "on".

cf. "Let's play Tiggy, <thump> you're on!"

Oh - and I never realised 'bundle' was a game. Where I grew up it was a form of warfare

There's a difference when you're seven?

Honestly!

The game is called Tag. Everyone knows that, surely! :)

We called the game "had", the person most recently "had" being "it".

We also had no scheme for dealing with injury, but there was usually a "home" in which you couldn't be "had", and which ideally was too small for everyone to fit in at once. If it wasn't, there would be a sub-game in which whoever was perceived to be spending too much time in the home would be bodily flung out by everyone else.

By way of a data point, the terminology used in Gauntlet II is that the player so touched is indeed "it". If Gauntlet II uses it, it must be correct.

OK, any excuse to fire up my Gauntlet II MAME ROM. :-)

Surely other people ended up playing kiss chase - voluntarily or otherwise...

a few years later on, indeed :) and then it regularly carried over after hours ;)

did no-one play marbles or conkers?

I'm not sure I was running away later on. I'm sure it only works when it's icky ;-)
I played marbles and conkers but marbles got banned after someone threw one through a window and conkers got banned after parents complained they were exploding in the oven and making a mess.

Its called Pile On.

So true is the above statement that Games Workshop's Blood Bowl game has a skill named after it (Piling On), used to squash opponents into splutchy pancakes.

Defence rests.

Never mind a rest, any defence which refers to Games Workshop as an authority (on any subject, at all) needs an extended holiday.

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Howway...

Why aye

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Games

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Tag/Tig/It

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Kiss chase

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Pile On!

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