|
Evidence for J'erin
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.1227
Type Ethnography
Location Southern Nigeria
Date 1939-01-01 - 1939-12-31
Rules 2x6 board. Four counters in each hole. Sowing proceeds in an anti-clockwise direction. When the final counter of a sowing lands in an occupied hole, the counters are picked up and sowing continues. When the final counter lands in an occupied hole in the player's own row causing it to contain four counters, these are captured and the turn ends. If the final counter falls into an empty hole, the turn ends. If at any point in the sowing a hole in the player's own row is made to contain four counters, they are taken. When there are only eight counters left on the board, the first player to make four counters in a hole captures all the remaining counters. At the end of the game, players place their captured counters four by four into the remaining holes. Players may thus capture holes from the opponent's row, one for every four counters placed in a hole. They may capture from these holes in the next round. Play continues until one player owns no holes.
Content "J'erin. the seeds are laid out as for 'ayoyayo,' byt the opening move consists of taking the contents of two adjoining houses, four in each hand, from one's own side of the board, and dropping them one by one in the houses lying next in a counter-clockwise direction, as before. The rules for 'eating' are quite different from those in 'ayoyayo,' but apart from this the moves are as follows. When one hand is empty the player continues to move round the board from the point where he left off using the seeds in the other hand. On the last of his seeds being dropped, he takes up all the seeds now in the house in which this seed has fallen and continues to move round the board using his fresh supply of seeds. The gambit is continued as long as his last seed does not drop into an empty house. Totals of four made during this play are removed from the board and the player continues his circuit of the board unless the last seed in hand makes the number of seeds in the house reached up to four, in which case he removes them, but has nothing with which to continue his move. In "J'erin" a player cannot take seeds from his opponent's houses, as in ayoyayo, but only from his own side of the board, and if he omits to take any set of seeds to which, by the above rule, he is entitled, his opponent may take them. After the game the seeds are replaced in the houses, and in the event of a win (a draw is possible), the winner fills not only his own houses but also some of his opponent's. These extra hosues on the other side of the board are now added to his for the next game, in which he is allowed to take 'fours' from them. Thus in a second game, a player may have as many as ten houses. Eleven is a possible number, but such a state of affairs gives the opponent no sort of show as it leaves him only one house in which to 'eat'" Newberry 1939: 79-80.
Confidence 100
Ages All
Genders All
Source Newberry, R. 1939. 'Games and Pastimes of Southern Nigeria.' The Nigerian Field 8:75-80.
|
