Board games from the city of Vijayanagara (Hampi ... - Gioco dell'Oca.

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16 B OARD G AME S TUDIES 6, 2003 it could be played by both boys and girls. Girls played for their pins and boys for their buttons. The pot could also consist of matches, marks, marbles, coins, and, at Christmas time: nuts, raisins, beans, or the like. The prevalent letter combination on the dice was A-H-N-P: alle-halve-niks-pung ud!, that is: “all-half-nothing-fork out!” According to which letter came up, one won the whole pot, half of it, nothing or inserted a stake into the pot. In the southern part of Funen the name of the dice stick and the game was simply alle-halve-niks-pung ud, but in that same area the game was also named nikkelhus and the dice stick nikletræ or nikkelstræ. Hus means “house” and træ means “(a piece of) wood”. In other parts of Funen the game was called niks and was played with a niksepind or niksetræ. (20) In South Zealand the dice stick, too, was named a niks. This name was of course borrowed from the German nichts. On the island of Samsø north of Funen the game was named spille nåle, that is “to play pins”, and the dice stick a nåletræ, literally a pin-like piece of wood, but also meaning “coniferous tree”. (21) This name was probably a distortion of nikletræ or the like. In Vendsyssel, in Northern Jutland, the game was named ponni and was played with a ponnipind. (22) This name was prevalent in Jutland, and the verb ponnie (til/ved) is found sporadically also outside its use in the game, in the sense of “fork out”, “pay”, “contribute”, but this is presumably a secondary phenomenon. The designation is primarily connected with the game and is probably a Danish translation of the Latin ponere, to put or to set. This Latin word constituted a part of the name of the game and dice stick in the extreme south-western part of Jutland. Here the name alles-mein-nichts-ponneve’ was in use, undoubtedly borrowed from the German. On this was inscribed the letters A-M- N-P, of which the M, “mein”, that is “my own”, gave one’s own stake (Fig. 10). (23) Fig. 10. Alles-mein-nichts-poner ved. A dice stick used for a game of the same name, played in Hostrup near Tønder, Denmark. (Drawing in Ottsen 1961-69). South of the Danish-German border similar dice sticks were used. On the North Frisian isles Føhr and Amrum the dice stick was called pönki. On its sides was written A-H-N-P, allas, helft, nant, pönki. The latter word meant “Pfändchen”, that is “small forfeit”. One said also pönki tu! (“contribute!”). In a variant the H was replaced by M A, min anj, that is “my own”, referring to the stake, and N by N N, Neggels nant, interpreted as “Nikolaus nichts!”. (24) In Dittmarschen, on the west coast of Holstein, the dice stick was named allholt. This, too, was provided with the letters A (alles), H (halb), N (nichts) and P (which was interpreted as Peter, sett an!, that is “Peter, put in!”). The allholt (all-wood) was not only used in the game itself, but also when a ship sank, it was used to divide up the wreckage. (25) In Hamburg the same game was named A-H-P-N, an abbreviation of all-half-peuto-niks. (26)
P. M ICHAELSEN, ON SOME UNUSUAL TYPES OF STICK DICE 17 Several of the names mentioned are probably very old. Parallels in other countries make it very likely that they have their origin in the Middle Ages. Not only ponni, but also nikkel in names like nikkelstræ, and the North Frisian Neggels in Neggels nant, has a Latin, probably medieval origin. The nichell mentioned by the Scottish poet William Dunbar around 1500 was preserved in Scotland and parts of England as nickelty naething or nickelty nowt, both names referring to the N-side of the teetotum. (27) In the Low German ‘altmärkisch’ dialect of Salzwedel, the same side was named nig’l-nix. (28) These words all derive from the Latin nihil. “Nikolaus” is a folk etymology, which has a parallel in the “Peter” already mentioned and in a “Thomas” from Northern Jutland, referring to the letter T on one of the dice faces (which again goes back to an original Latin totum, preserved as the name of the top in British dialects and in the French toton). (29) Finally, I can add that the tradition of naming the game by putting the names of the four sides of the dice together in one word is likewise rooted in an old tradition. We have an example of this in Gargantua by Rabelais, published in 1534, in which the game is called pille-nade-jocque-fore (‘plunder’, ‘nothing’, ‘game’, ‘out’). (30) Thus the English Lang Larence, at least in its four-sided version, was part of a larger, very old stick dice tradition. This tradition may have had a wider distribution at an earlier stage. Dice sticks in outdoor stick games Variants of the stick game, a game of physical dexterity played with a long and a short stick, are found in large parts of the world, from Iceland to Siberia, and from Spain to India. The game is old, being referred to as pandolo in Istrian and Venetian sources from the 15th and 16th century, (31) as cat or tip-cat in English sources from the 17th century (32) , and as vippa in a Swedish source from the 17th century. (33) It is mentioned already in an Indian source from the 5th century B.C., and in a Turkish source from c.1070 A.D. In addition, tip-cat-like sticks from Ancient Egypt (late Middle Kingdom) have been found during excavations. (34) Some of the British variants formed during their evolution the basis for the game of Cricket. As shown by the Danish game historian Frederik Knudsen in 1920 (Fig. 11), the short stick has gradually become smaller and smaller. (35) Eventually it was replaced by the ball, so that the game in its developed form has undergone a metamorphosis, disappearing as a stick game, and passing into the large fam- Fig. 11. Short and long sticks for the stick game as played on the isles of Bornholm and Fanø, Denmark. Fig. 1: Neksø, Bornholm, width 4 cm, length 9 and 69 cm. Fig. 2: Rønne, Bornholm, width 3 cm, length 4 and 70 cm. Fig. 3: and 4: Fanø, length 70 and 8,5 cm (fig.3) and 71 and 12 cm (fig.4). (Drawing by Thor Petersen in Knudsen 1920).
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Board games from the city of Vijayanagara (Hampi ... - Gioco dell'Oca.

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