Flapdragon

What with house-to-housing for cocktails, dialing in on the Bishop's sermon, jamming into a box for the Christmas matinee, going to another dance; and what with municipal Christmas trees, stuffed store windows, red Santas on the street corners and grimy urchins in the alleys, the metropolite has Yuletide sports aplenty. In the country there are house-to-housing, dialing, village Christmas trees, bob-hitching behind autos, fashionable coasting at the country club, taking of pictures of the house, going to another dance, telephoning the neighbors. . . . Here and there the yule-log is still drawn and the waits sing. Here and there the bowl flows and there is good talk instead of bad bridge. But where is Flapdragon, ancient of games?

Musing about books for the North American Review, a reviewer bethought her of Flapdragon. Said she: ". . . . has the game gone out of fashion with seasonable snow, brown bowls of ale with roasted crabs in 'em, and night-watchmen, and the life of the great country houses. . . .? We used to play Flapdragon, I remember, as it drew to midnight, while we waited for the bells of the New Year. On the polished table in the dining-room was placed the biggest dish in the house, a crackled, oven-browned, blue-and-white Victorian with a channel and a gravy puddle at one end. On it were laid three pennies and six pennies and bright, new shillings, and upon them were piled up the fat Christmas raisins, prunes and French plums. Over all was poured a bottle or so of brandy and trie lamps were turned out while a responsible uncle put a match to it--and the fun, the rather terrifying fun, began! The leaping thin flames, blue and yellow like wild pansies, turned the laughing players into a shifting, shrieking, witch's circle ... a whirl of darting hands and skirls of laughter and pain. . . . Where's the dictionary? "Flapdragon--Snapdragon.--A sport in which raisins or grapes are snapped from burning brandy and eaten. See example I " "The wantonness of the thing was to see each other look like a demon as we burnt ourselves and snatched at the fruit. This fantastical mirth was called Snap-dragon.' "STEELE, Toiler, No. 85.