Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/89

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The Scotch Fisher Child.
81

the neck. Sometimes chaplets are woven and placed round the head.

The girls of Pennan make thimbles of the air-vessels of "belly-waar".

(d) The children amuse themselves with "carle tangles", the stems of Lanunavia digitata, in the following way. Each player selects a few; one holds up one, the others strike it crosswise. If it breaks, the player holds up the one that broke it, whilst it is in turn struck till it is broken. This is playing at "sodgers". Instead of tangle, "carle doddies" (Plantago lanceolata) are used. Country children, and sometimes grown-up folks, amuse themselves with playing at "sodgers" with "carle doddies".


V.—Amusements with the Tide and the Waves.

(a) An amusement is to gather stones and build a little hillock, or to heap up one of sand, when the tide is rising, and then to take their stand upon it, and cry out:

"Willie, Willie Weet-feet
Winna get me."(Pennan.)

Or

"Willie, Willie Weet-feet,
Dinna weet me,
An a'll gee ye a Scots bawbee."(Macduff.)

They wait till they are nearly surrounded by the rising tide, and then jump. Such a little mound is called a "lockie-on" (Macduff).

(b) In Rosehearty this hillock is called "a prop", and the formula is:

"Knockie, knockie, nocean wash me awa',
Ten mile, ten mile, ten mile jaw."

When the sea struck it, the player jumped and roared. Girls, in doing this, often took off their shoes and stockings, and tucked up their clothes to keep them dry.