Blindman's Buff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean-Honoré Fragonard : The Blind Cow Game , 1751
Cornelis Troost: Blind cow game in the 18th century
Johann Georg Meyer : Children at the blind cow game , 19th century

Blindekuh even blind fold , is now played mainly by children parlor game .

regulate

A player is blindfolded with a scarf or a suitable cloth . The others run around and annoy the blind cow by calling or tugging and pinching it slightly. Anyone who can get hold of the blind cow must be blindfolded in their place .

variants

  • Anyone who is touched by the blind cow is eliminated. The game is played until there is only one player left, who now represents the new cow .
  • Anyone who is touched by the blind cow has to stop. The cow now scans the prisoner's face and only when she can name the correct name is a new blind man found.
  • There are several objects on a table. In your turn and blindfolded, you have to feel and guess an object.
  • Pot hitting , in which a blindfolded player and a wooden spoon must find an upturned pot with a reward.
Blind man's game (around 1803)

Historical

In the Middle Ages, the blind-cow game was not just a children's game , it was a widely popular, but forbidden, pastime that was sometimes dubious for the bourgeois morality. This can be seen, for example, in the persecution of the poet François Rabelais , who lets his giant king Pantagruel play the “blind cow” alongside other forbidden games in his well-read novel Gargantua and Pantagruel from 1535. After a character from one of his poems from 1534, the game is also called Colin Maillard in French . Well-known pictorial representations of the game emerged in the Netherlands, such as in the famous street scene The Children's Games by the peasant painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1560 or the nymphs in the blind-cow game of his compatriot Dirk van der Lisse in 1635. The blind cow enjoyed popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries Century, except among the bourgeoisie, also among adult court ladies and gentlemen, whereby the course of the game was increasingly formalized and adapted to bourgeois moral concepts. In England and northern Germany in the 18th century it was popular for the general entertainment of adults to play at Christmas when friends and relatives got together. The name “blind cow” can probably be explained in such a way that an animal mask (cow mask) was originally used for this game, on which the eye openings were closed. Such masks were in the Middle Ages in spiritual spectacles and were also in the carnival worn. In Schleswig, for example, the game used to be called “blind mum ”, in North Friesland “blinne mome”, which means nothing other than “blind mask”.

Ritual-magical origins

According to Siegbert A. Warwitz , the blind cow game was already celebrated as a cultic demon game in pre-Christian times : the demon hidden behind a bull or cow mask tried to grab people who disrespectfully approached him, thereby demonizing them and thereby himself To get redemption from blindness. The deeper meaning of the play of symbols is the ritual creation of sight through a magical act. This was only achievable in the equilibrium of the world order by transferring blindness to a haughty mocker. In the ritual symbolic games of the mythical-religious Ramayana and the Mahabharata epic (written between 400 BC and 400 AD) in the Indian, Indonesian and Ceylonese cultures (e.g. in Bali or Sri Lanka) over several thousand Years to this day a tradition has been kept alive, according to which demons hide their identity behind masks and react aggressively when they are exposed and ridiculed and try to beat their discoverers with eternal blindness.

literature

  • Dorothea Kühme: Citizens and Play. Board games in the German bourgeoisie between 1750 and 1850. (= historical studies. Volume 18). Campus, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1997, ISBN 3-593-35597-3 , pp. 172-188. (At the same time dissertation European University Institute Florence, 1995)
  • Francois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel . 2 volumes. Volume 1, Munich / Leipzig 1911. (New edition: Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-458-31777-5 )
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: From the sense of playing. Reflections and game ideas. 4th edition, Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1664-5 .

Web links

Commons : Blind man's bluff  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Single receipts

  1. ^ Francois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel . 2 volumes. Volume 1, Munich / Leipzig 1911. (New edition: Insel Verlag, 1974)
  2. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: Games of earlier times. In: Dies .: The sense of playing. Reflections and game ideas . 4th edition, Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, p. 107.
  3. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: The children's games by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Ä. In: Dies .: The sense of playing. Reflections and game ideas . 4th edition, Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, pp. 191–195.
  4. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Explanatory models for cross-border behavior . 2nd ext. Edition, Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1620-1 , p. 13.
  5. ↑ Kisari Mohan Ganguli: The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa. 4 volumes. India 1883-1896. (New Delhi 2004, ISBN 81-215-0593-3 )
  6. ↑ Heino Gehrts: Mahabharata. The happening and its meaning . Bouvier-Verlag, Bonn 1975.