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The 1887 The Merry Game of Old Maid: Mother Goose’s Party by McLoughlin Bros includes 43 cards highlighting nursery rhymes. The antique game cards are a wonderful collection of images which feature the Mother Goose rhymes. Twenty-one pairs of cards and one card depicting the Old Maid comprise the deck.
Included in the colorful game box are the directions for playing. It says any number of persons can play the simple game. To begin, all cards are dealt, one at a time, to the players. The player on the left of the dealer goes first. If, in his dealt hand, he has a matched pair, he sets the match down in front of him. The directions for the game leaves it for the players to decide if a player can lay down as many matches as he has, or only one per turn.
If on a player’s turn, he has not a match, he draws one card from his right neighbor’s hand. If it matches one in his hand, he can set the match down. Play continues as described until all matches are placed down. The Old Maid card is the only card without a match and so the player left with the Old Maid in his hand is considered the Old Mail, or Old Bachelor.
Obviously, the game is quick and easy to play. During the time it was created (late 1800’s), players enjoyed gathering around, socializing, and learning. This game taught players the many nursery rhymes. The game was like a little book of Mother Goose rhymes of today.
The following are some examples of the cards and some of the rhymes found on them:
“A diller, a dollar, a ten o’clock scholar,
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o’clock,
but now you come at noon.”
“There was a little man. And he had a little gun,
And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead.
He went to the brook and saw a little duck,
And he shot it through the head, head, head.”
“He carried it home to his old wife Joan,
And bid a fire for to make, make, make,
To roast the little duck he had shot in the brook,
And he’d go and fetch her the drake, drake, drake.”
“Doctor Foster went to Gloster in a shower of rain; He stepped in a puddle up to the middle and never went there again.”
“A cat came fiddling out of a barn with a pair of bag-pipes under his arm;
She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, the mouse has married the humble-bee.”
The old McLoughlin Bros. game shares a time in the past. Some of the rhymes of the game, like the ones above, are not well known today. Others, like Jack and Jill, Hey Diddle Diddle, or Ole King Cole, continue to be loved and are told. All are a treasure in the game.
