No. 92 Hul Gul
This game is played by three, four, or more, who stand in a circle. A child then addresses his left-hand neighbor, and the dialogue is:
“Hul Gul.”
“Hands full.”
“Parcel how many?”
The second player then guesses the number, two guesses being sometimes allowed. If, for example, the guess is five, and the real number seven, the first responds, “Give me two to make it seven,” and so on until all the counters have been gained by one player. The number allowed to be taken is often limited, by agreement, to six or ten.
The counters are beans, grains of corn, marbles, nuts, and, in the South, chinquapins.95
A childish trick is to expand the hand as if unable to hold the number of counters, when in fact they are but one or two. Oddly enough, this same device is alluded to by Xenophon as in use in his day in the game of “How many?”—the classic equivalent of our game, in which the question was, “How many have I in the hand?” just as we say, “Parcel how many?” So, in these sports, the interval of two thousand years vanishes.