ad:

"Now are they tossing of his legs and arms,
Like loggats at a pear-tree."

[800] Clark and Wright's "Notes to Hamlet," 1876, pp. 212, 213.

Sir Thomas Hanmer makes the game the same as nine-pins or skittles. He
says: "It is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the Thirty-third
statute of Henry VIII.;[801] it is the same which is now called
kittle-pins, in which the boys often make use of bones instead of
wooden pins, throwing at them with another bone instead of bowling."

[801] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," p. 365; Nares's
"Glossary," vol. ii. p. 522.

_Marbles._ It has been suggested that there is an allusion to this
pastime in "Measure for Measure" (i. 3):

"Believe not that the dribbling dart of love
Can pierce a complete bosom."

--dribbling being a term used in the game of marbles for shooting slowly
along the ground, in contradistinction to _plumping_, which is elevating
the hand so that the marble does not touch the ground till it reaches
the object of its aim.[802] According to others, a dribbler was a term
in archery expressive of contempt.[803]

[802] Baker's "Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i. p. 198.

[803] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 134.

_Muss._ This was a phrase for a scramble, when any small objects were
thrown down, to be taken by those who could seize them. In "Antony and
Cleopatra" (iii. 13), Antony says:

"Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth."

The word is used by Dryden, in the Prologue to the "Widow Ranter:"

"Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down
But there's a muss of more than half the town."

_Nine-Men's-Morris._ This rustic game, which is still extant in some
parts of England, was sometimes called "the nine men's merrils," from
_merelles_, or _mereaux_, an ancient French word for the jettons or
counters with which it was played.[804] The other term, _morris_, is
probably a corruption suggested by the sort of dance which, in the
progress of the game, the counters performed. Some consider[805] that it
was identical with the game known as "Nine-holes,"[806] mentioned by
Herrick in his "Hesperides:"

"Raspe playes at nine-holes, and 'tis known he gets
Many a tester by his game, and bets."

[804] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 144.

[805] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 605.

[806] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 368, 369.

Cotgrave speaks of "L