In all the many centuries of our history there have been boys and girls; and, whatever has been going on in the world around them, they have found time to play. In the Great War our soldiers could not but be struck by the way in which the children in places under bombardment took advantage of any lull in the firing to come out of their hiding places, and go on with their games, in spite of the ruin and desolation and danger all round them.

Many of our English games go back so far in the history of man that their origin is forgotten. Yet there are games which children play now just as they did in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and those queer rhymes, which you know so well, and understand nothing about, have been repeated, some of them, since England began to be England.

There is plenty to say about games, but not enough space to say it all here. There are some games which come and go as regularly as the seasons. The queer part of it all is: Who starts the game? As sure as the early spring evenings arrive you will find boys playing at marbles. Town or country, it does not matter, all at once "marbles are in". Nobody says it is "marble season"; nobody ever yet found the boy who brings out the first marble of the season. Somehow a something inside a boy tells him it is "marble" time, and the marbles appear in his pocket.

It is just the same with "tops"; they come and they go with absolute regularity. They come as if by magic, and by magic they disappear. When the errand-boy, who has left school a month or two, stops, basket on arm, to watch the game, you may be sure that it is the height of the season. When the ground is occupied by the little chaps who have just come up from the infant school, and the errand-boy passes whistling by on the other side, it is quite certain that the season is over and gone.

These are games that want no clubs, associations, nor subscriptions. Yet they are governed by time-honoured rules, which have never been written down, but must be strictly observed, or there is much talking and wrangling over the game.

Sports have an important place in the life of towns and villages nowadays; but, though cricket and football are old games really, they have not always been as popular as they are now. Cricket, in some form or other, was played in the thirteenth century when it was played with a crooked or clubbed stick called a "cryc". Indeed all games where a ball is used are more or less ancient. It seems to have been played at Guildford as early as 1598, but modern cricket only dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. Kent seems to have led the way, and Hampshire was the home of the game in 1774.

Tennis, or "fives" was a favourite game for many centuries, and it was quite a common thing in some places for it to be played against the church tower, which was a very convenient place for the game. Complaints were frequently made of the damage done to and around the churches by the playing of unlawful and disordered games of many kinds. At times attempts were made to put down the playing of tennis. But by the time of Queen Elizabeth it had come into favour, and the privilege of keeping tennis-courts was eagerly sought for, and the game became very popular indeed later on; but it went out of fashion again towards the end of the eighteenth century, only to be revived again in our own times.

It is only within the last forty years that football has become popular. Football of some kind has been played for many centuries, especially in the streets of towns. Kingston, Chester, and Dorking, amongst other places, have a custom of playing football on Shrove Tuesday. The story as to how the custom arose is the same in most of these places.

Far back in the ninth century a party of Danes ravaged the district and attacked the town. The townsmen made a brave stand against them till help came. Then the Danes were defeated, their leader slain, his head struck off, and kicked about the streets in triumph. That is said to have given rise to the custom; but it was a very ghastly football.

Football was not always regarded with favour. Folk often wanted to play football when their lords and masters wanted them to practise shooting with their bows and arrows; but they were frequently told what a dangerous game it was, and over and over again it was forbidden. Football was always apparently a game over which the players fell out, much as they do now. Nearly four hundred years ago a worthy gentleman wrote of the game:—

"It is nothyng but beastely fury and extreme violence, whereby procedeth hurte, and consequently rancour and malice do remayne with thym that be wounded".

There are some places where the schoolboys of long, long ago have left their marks. In the cloisters at Westminster Abbey, at Canterbury, at Norwich, at Salisbury and at Gloucester Cathedral, for instance, are some roughly cut marks in the old benches, forming the "tables" or "boards" on which they played some almost forgotten games with stones.

Then, too, there is "hop-scotch" which at some seasons of the year makes the sidewalks of many bye-streets so untidy with its rudely chalked courts; rounders and "tip-cat"; battledore and shuttlecock, to say nothing of skipping and many another game—all old, old games, which are ever new, and never out of date.