School: Yellow Furze

Location:
Yellow Furze, Co. Meath
Teacher:
Síle, Bean Uí Leamhain
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0684, Page 208

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0684, Page 208

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  3. XML “Another Game - "Buttons"”

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  1. Another Game
    "Buttons"
    This was a game played mostly by boys though I was told girls too often went about with their pockets full of buttons. As for the boys every pocket was a storehouse of all sorts of them - big, small, plain, fancy, white, black, red and every colour.
    The chief game resembled the very common local one of "Pitch and Toss", but there were others too. I was told of one which was played sometimes in secret in the bottom desks of school while those pupils who were under the masters eye were busy working. This was the indoor game of "Buttons" as I heard it.
    One boy held a "Teetum Totum" - a homemade wooden toy which had 4 flat sides and a pointed end. On each side was printed one of the four letters P,A.T,N. The player spun the Teetum Totum while each of the others put down a button. If it fell with an "A" uppermost the spinner took all the buttons. If "N" appeared he took none. If "P" showed up....
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Kitty Reilly
    Gender
    Female