Marbles....The Rules.

BeardyGit

I'm getting old. I can't for the life of me remember the rules of the various marble games I used play in school in the early 80's....But I know you lot do!

So how's about some help?

The games:

1. Shores....Don't know if it was just my old school where this was played but it centred around flicking marbles into a 'shore' in the schoolyard. Sometime ending catastrophically when some turd lobbed a massive 'steely' (ball-bearing) into the shore and broke the metal grate resulting in all the marbles falling 2' into a pile of rotten leaves and crap. I'm pretty sure this worked on a sudden death format. Anyone else remember?

2. The one where you'd play against one other player. It involved making a sort of 'V' shape with your heels together, standing behind the marble. The opponent would have to try hitting your marble from the place where the last 'round' was played so to speak. Anyone?

If you've any other school-yard marble games to share I'd like to hear the rules too!

And then there's the names for the marbles:

Oilys - The shiny black/graphite coloured ones
Chinesees - Looked like your gran's blue on white porcelain tea set
Gullys - Big mother of a marble usually led to arguments over destroyed smaller marbles and fairness.....
Cat's Eyes - The clear one with a green or red insert
Steelys - Great if you owned a couple but terrifying if you'd lost your last one and had to battle with a bag full of glass ones instead....Especially if the game involved "chips".

Can you remember some more names? I've found very little with a Google on this - Mainly just american or 'formal' marble game rules and names. I'm looking for the Irish versions!

Cheers,

Gil

Phibsboro

I think my memory may be as bad as yours, but just to add some details I do recall. What you call "chips" i think we knew as "dibs" and there were high dibs and low dibs. High dibs was dropping the marble from shoulder height, low dips was dropping from waist(or knee?) height. I can't recall how you ended up getting these shots tho. As I remember it, the only game we ever played in school involved simply hitting your opponents marble. As our school yard sloped gently down to a long open gutter, marble season would see groups of boys crouched around this gutter as shots swung from side to side, mostly missing the intended target. In this straight u hit em you win em scenario, there had to be a weighting system for the fancier marbles you list, thus if you played a lad who had a chinesey you might have to offer 10 ordinary marbles for it. A steely would be worth even more. A gulley was 4 or 5 i think.

Found a good general site on dublin games, tho only a brief mention of marbles that doesn't add to your memories.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/kirwilli/games/games.htm

C

ciaran76

I remember marbles having different points too ?

Like a scungy(sp?) the big mother marble was worth 8 points ? So you had to hit it 8 times to get it. But if it had black in it it was worth 10 !!!!

Hagar

We use to line up marbles along the garden wall, within about a half inch of the wall, and try to knock them out of position by rolling a scunger or steely at them from the edge of the footpath. Everybody put up the same number of marbles and you kept whatever you dislodged.

nialldinho

bogs aimies lashies

rubadub

no dabbsies if playing steelies against gullies