Re: [lace-chat] Fwd: push-pin

[Lynn Carpenter]

Janice Blair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

My daughter asked if I had ever heard of an old English game called
push-pin.  I guess it was waaay before my time.  It came up at college.
Has anyone else heard about it and how to play it?

I have Alice Bertha Gomme's The Traditional Games of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, first published in 1894 (Volume I) and 1898 (Volume II) by
David Nutt, London, and reprinted by Dover Pub. in 1964, but now out of print.

Now, for likely more than the list ever wanted to know about the game of
push-pin!

I'll quote the whole entry on push-pin:

Push-pin, or Put-pin
A child's play, in which pins are pushed with an endeavour to cross them.
So explained by Ash, but it would seem, from Beaumont and Fletcher, vii.
25, that the game was played by aiming pins at some object. --Halliwell's
_Dictionary_.

To see the sonne you would admire,
Goe play at push-pin with his sire. --_Men's Miracles_, 1656, p. 15

Love and myselfe, beleeve me on a day,
At childish push-pin for our sport did play. -- Herrick's _Works_, i.22.

There is an allusion to it under the name of put-pin in Nash's _Apologie_,
1593:
That can lay down maidens bedds,
And that can hold ther sickly heds;
That can play at put-pin,
Blow poynte and near lin.

Two pins are laid upon a table, and the object of each player is to push
his pin across his opponent's pin. --Addy's _Sheffield Glossary_.

See Hattie, Pop the Bonnet. [end quote]

(Hattie, A game with pins on the crown of a hat.  Two or more may play.
Each lays on a pin,then with the hand they strike the side of the hat time
about, and whoever makes the pins by a stroke cross each other, lifts those
so crossed.

Pop the Bonnet, A game in which two, each putting down a pin on the crown
of a hat or bonnet, alternately pop on the bonnet till one of the pins
crosses the other; then he at whose pop or tap this takes place, lifts the
stakes.)

Gambling for pins occurs pretty often in this collection of descriptions of
children's games -- I guess I don't need to lecture lacemakers on how
valuable  pins used to be!

Lynn Carpenter in SW Michigan, USA
alwen at i2k dot com

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[lace-chat] Fwd: push-pin

[Janice Blair]

My daughter asked if I had ever heard of an old English game called push-pin.  
I guess it was waaay before my time.  It came up at college.  Has anyone else 
heard about it and how to play it?
Janice

Judy Blair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 06:41:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Judy Blair 
Subject: push-pin
To: Janice Blair 

The game of push-pin is mentioned most famously by Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832) in his often misquoted statement: Prejudice apart, the game
of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and
poetry.

It is also mentioned in Robert Herrick's poem, Love's Play at Push-Pin,
and in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost Act IV, Scene 3. The only
other mention i can find online is from John Adams in a letter he wrote in
1820.

Webster's dictionary defines it as a child's game played with pins. The
note on Herrick's poem defines it as a game in which pins are pushed
with an endeavour to cross them.

Does anyone have any idea what the game really was?



Janice Blair
Crystal Lake, 50 miles northwest of Chicago, Illinois, USA

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