(_c_) This is clearly a variant of "Pray, Pretty Miss," colours being used perhaps from a local custom at fairs and May meetings, where girls were called by the colours of the ribbons they wore.
A cheating game, played with a strap and skewer at fairs, &c, by persons of the thimble-rig class, probably the same as the game called "Fast and Loose."
Christmas morning is ushered in by the little maidens playing at the game of "Prickey Sockey," as they call it. They are dressed up in their best, with their wrists adorned with rows of pins, and run about from house to house inquiring who will play at the game. The door is opened and one cries out--
Prickey sockey for a pin, I car not whether I loss or win.
The game is played by the one holding between her two forefingers and thumbs a pin, which she clasps tightly to prevent her antagonist seeing either part of it, while her opponent guesses. The head of the pin is "sockey," and the point is "prickey," and when the other guesses she touches the end she guesses at, saying, "this for prickey," or "this for sockey," At night the other delivers her two pins. Thus the game is played, and when the clock strikes twelve it is declared up; that is, no one can play after that time.--_Mirror_, 1828, vol. x. p. 443.
A childish game, played with pins, and similar to "Odds or Evens,"--Teviotdale (Jamieson), but it is more probable that this is the game of "Prickey Sockey," which Jamieson did not see played.
A peat clod is put into the shell of the crook by one person, who then shuts his eyes. Some one steals it. The other then goes round the circle trying to discover the thief, and addressing particular individuals in a rhyme--
Ye're fair and leal, Ye canna steal; Ye're black and fat, Ye're the thief of my priest-cat!
If he guesses wrong he is in a wadd, if right he has found the thief.--Chambers' _Popular Rhymes_, p. 128.
This is an entirely different game to the "Priest-Cat" given by Mactaggart (see "Jack's Alive"), and seems to have originated in the discovery of stolen articles by divination.
William Carleton describes this game as follows:--"One of the boys gets a wig upon himself, goes out on the floor, places the boys in a row, calls on his man Jack, and says to each, 'What will you be?' One answers, 'I'll be Black Cap,' another, 'Red Cap,' and so on. He then says, 'The priest of the parish has lost his considering-cap. Some says this, and some says that, but I say my man Jack.' Man Jack then, to put it off himself, says, 'Is it me, sir?' 'Yes you, sir.' 'You lie, sir.' 'Who then, sir?' 'Black Cap.' If Black Cap then doesn't say, 'Is it me, sir?' before the priest has time to call him he must put his hand on his ham and get a pelt of the brogue. A boy must be supple with the tongue in it."--_Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, p. 106 (Tegg's reprint).