Speaking of bricolage …

I’m working on inventing a game called “Bacchic Orphic hopscotch.” The inspiration for it came from Alan M Stanier’s Vestiges of Pre-Christian Ritual in the Game of Hopscotch:

Thus it seems the game cannot symbolise “the progress of the soul from earth to heaven” as Combie asserts: rather, if it has any symbolic meaning, it would symbolise some venture into a dangerous place and sucessful return, or some rite of passage. Thus, while the eschatological nomenclature does suggest some Christian beliefs embedded in hopscotch, they appear to have been overlaid on some other foundation.

To the Classisist, a journey into the depths and back brings to mind Orpheus’ doomed attempt to bring his wife Eurydice, dead from a serpent bite, back from the Underworld. According to the version of the Orphean legend given by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, following the second loss of Eurydice, Orpheus founded the Orphic mystery sect. We have no record of the Orphic rites, but it seems possible that they would re-enact Orpheus’ failed enterprise, perhaps with some element of sympathetic magic, a belief that, were the journey to be completed properly, Orpheus’ looking back would be counteracted and Eurydice released again.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold in the Middle English romance of Sir Orfeo, which tells how King Orfeo of Thrace (which, the story insists, was the early name for Winchester) rescued his wife Heurodis. She had been stolen her away by the King of Fairy, and taken to his underworld kingdom. Distraught, Orfeo left his court, and wandered into the forest for ten years, then saw Heurodis riding with the fairy host. He followed them to the Court of the Fairy King, whom he entertained by playing the harp. Charmed by the music, the Fairy King asked Orfeo to name his reward, and he asked for the release of Heurodis, returning with her to reclaim his throne. This legend remained current long enough to appear in song, King Orfeo being one of the ballads collected by Francis James Child. This is one of a corpus of songs in Child’s collection, others being Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, which tell of the recovery or return of someone from Fairyland, suggesting a widespread beief in such occurances. Given such a belief, it seems reasonable to assume there would have been rituals to ward against being taken away with the fairies, which might have taken the form of a symbolic rescue. One version of the Tam Lin ballad has the curious stanza

First dip me in a stand of milk,
And then in a stand of water;
Haud me fast, let me na gas,
I’ll be your bairnie’s father.

This is a reference to the belief that someone who had been put into non-human shape by enchantment count be returned to their true shape by immersion in liquid. The similarity to Christian baptism is striking, and perhaps one reason for the Church to baptise by immersion was that pagans would understand this as a ritual to promote “rebirth” in a better form.

Another classical myth which features a journey into peril and safe return, is Theseus’ journey into the Labyrinth to kill the Minatour and out again following Ariagne’s thread. Following this, according to Plutarch:-

“Now Theseus, in his return from Crete, put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god of the island, dedicated to the temple the image of Venus which Ariadne had given him, and danced with the young Athenians a dance that, in memory of him, they say is still preserved among the inhabitants of Delos, consisting in certain measured turnings and returnings, imitative of the windings and twistings of the labyrinth. And this dance, as Dicæarchus writes, is called among the Delians the Crane. This he danced around the Ceratonian Altar, so called from its consisting of horns taken from the left side of the head. They say also that he instituted games in Delos, where he was the first that began the custom of giving a palm to the victors.”

It seems possible that these dances, “imitative of the windings and twistings of the labyrinth”, might have survived long enough to have become a precursor of hopscotch.

In addition to the regular game-play of hopscotch each space could be assigned a phylax or sentry that you have to recite symbola from memory to, like in the gold leaves. I might even adopt the Chthonic Planetary system proposed by Jack Faust.

Imagine this game being performed by three or four who are half-mad from god and wine, faces smeared with white ash, babbling mystic tokens as they hop in and out of the underworld. Oh yes, what a delightful game that would be!