ABSTRACT
Many of the activities that the author saw at playtime were not just made up on the spot, but had been handed down from generation to generation. The children's games invariably involved the allocation of specific roles and the variety of methods available often made this task so absorbing that the serious business of the game itself never got under way. Manipulation can best be prevented by dips where the participation still leaves a sizeable section of the rhyme to be counted out. It would be tempting to believe that the counting out rhymes rely solely on chance, in contrast to the skilled methods. Some rhymes not only selected roles, but were repeated as an integral part of the game. Chasing games, in which a player tries to touch others who are running freely, were immensely popular among all age groups, but particularly with the infant boys. Races were rare among the infants.
