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NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. VIL MAY n, 1907.
laughing and jolly, and within a night or
two sate down to play at Basset, as the
Queen her predecessor used to do." In
Addison's Spectator, No. 323, 11 March,
1712, the young lady enters in her diary
" From 6 to 11 at Basset ; never set again
on the ace of diamonds."
Nicholas Howe, who died in 1718, writes : Some dress, some dance, some play, not to forget Your paquet parties and your dear Basset.
Pope in his Town Eclogue entitled ' The Basset Table ' has these lines : But of what marble must that breast be form'd To gaze on Basset, and remain unwarm'd ; and again :
But who the bowl or rattling dice compares To Basset's heavenly joys and pleasing cares?
Gleek, a game played by three persons with forty-four cards, is described in ' Wit's Interpreter ' by Cotgrave (1685), from w^hich extracts are given in Nares's ' Glossary.' The cards had nicknames. The ace of trumps was Tid ; the knave, Tom. Strutt, in the introduction to ' Sports and Pastimes of England,' remarks that Forest, speaking of Catherine of Arragon, says that when she was young she was given " to pastyme at tables, tick-tacke, or gleeke."
At 8 S. ii. 148 a correspondent writes :
"In Mr. Froude's 'Divorce of Catherine of Aragon' (p. 443) I read, 'of John Kite, Bishop of Carlisle, little is known, save that Sir William Kingston said he used to play "penny gleek " with him.'"
Gleek is twice alluded to by Shakspeare : in 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' III. i., " The more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion " ; and in ' Romeo and Juliet,' IV. v., " No money, on my faith ; but the gleek."
From a passage in Greene's ' Tu Quoque ' (1599) the game seems to have been popular :
"Come, gentlemen, what's your game? Why, gleek, that 's your only game : gleek let it be, for I am persuaded I shall gleek some of you : twelve pence gleek ? "
In Ben Jonson's ' The Devil is an Ass,' V. ii., written in 1614, there is a reference to this game : " When you please, sir, I am for threepenny gleek your man " ; and in his ' Staple of News,' at close of the fourth act, " A mournival of protests, or a gleek at least." A mournival was four cards of a sort, as four aces ; a gleek was three cards of a sort, as three kings.
In the old play ' Albumazar ' there is the expression " a gleek of marriages " : three couples to be married on the same day.
In the ' Verney Memoirs,' vol. i. p. 438,
Susan Alport writes to Lady Verney in
Paris, on 21 July, 1648, asking her to execute
a commission for her
"as far as 30 shillings will goe, so much I will bestow on gloves; ye money I use to loose att gleeke " ;
and in the same ' Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 245,. Mrs. Isham writes in June, 1665 :
"Lady Sherard with myself hath beaten one Lady Beamon out of the pitt at ha-penny gleeke : You may think how itt wearied me to play this small game."
Mumchance. Halliwell in his ' Dictionary of Archaic Words ' calls it
" an old game mentioned in Cotgrave ; according to some writers, silence was an indispensable re- quisite, and in Devon a silent stupid person is called a mumchance."
- The Imperial Diet.' terms it " a game of
hazard with cards or dice."
There are references to it in Dekker's
- Belman of London' (1608), " Cardes are
fetcht, and mumchance or decoy is the game " ; and in Alexander Brome's ' Jovial Crew ' (1652), " I ha' known him ory, when he has lost but three shillings at mum- chance."
In Cavendish's ' Life of Wolsey,' vol. i. p. 52, a banquet is given at the Cardinal's house in honour of Henry VIII., when a party of strangers, supposed to be noblemen from France, are introduced by the Lord Chamberlain, who informs the King that they,
" having understanding of this triumphant banquet, where are assembled such a number of excellent fair dames, could do no less but to repair hither to view as well their incomparable beauty as for to accompany them at Mumchance, and then after to dance with them."
New Cut. In Nares's ' Glossary ' this is described as " a sort of game with cards " ; and in the play of ' A Woman killed by Kind- ness,' by Heywood (1617), one of the cha- racters says :
"You are best at New-Cut, Wife, You '11 play at that ; If you play at New cut, I 'm the soonest hitter of any here for a wager."
Ombre. This game of cards is supposed to have been brought into England by Catherine of Portugal, Queen of Charles II. Halliwell in his ' Dictionary,' quoting from ' The Complete Gamester,' ed. 1721, says :
" Three only can play, to whom are dealt 9 cards apiece, so that discarding the eights, nines, and tens, there will remain 13 cards in the stock, there is no trump, but what the player pleases; the first hand has the liberty to play or pass, after him the second, &c."
Wycherley in 'The Gentleman Dancing Master,' I. i., acted in 1671, mentions among
