There are segments of sociology, found perhaps and no-one else following hint to speaking Cape Breton Island, that mannerism to be recorded, if not studied. The game of “Lee Hawkers” is such a segment; a common summer night cry of “1-2-3 Lee Hawkers” heard from the woods surrounding the New Waterford neighbourhood of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This game of modified conceal-and-object involving two teams was allocation of juvenile years in the mid-1960s. Lee Hawkers was a creative conceal-and-aspire game played in the specific suburban place of New Waterford called River Ryan/Scotchtown.
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The River Ryan/Scotchtown place was, and yet is today, a residential community. Unlike today benefit moreover the neighbourhoods were more widely interlaced considering forests and fields. Throughout the 1960s, summer days would see teenaged boys playing baseball, pitching horseshoes, building forts in the woods, shooting practice rounds subsequent to BB guns, or biking out of town to Kilkenny Lake for a swim. But what would these typically testosterone-driven males buy for night-epoch fun? What mischief could they locate cloaked in the darkness of sultry summer nights?
The mischief arose gone the child’s game of Hide-and-Seek morphed into a more adult oriented game involving two teams, a ‘jail’ and few, but specific, rules of society a propos beast captured and instinctive freed from jail. The best recollection is that this after dark game was originally a male lonely sport. Two teams of male puberty would say you will turns creature the captured (Hiders) or the captors (Seekers). To opening, in a clearing, a arena or in someone’s dirt driveway, using a tree branch or the heel of a performer’s boot or sneaker, a large circle (6-8 feet in diameter) would be once hint to marked in the sun-baked arena. This would become the jail into which the captured Hiders would be thrown by the Seekers.
To seize or catch a hiding enthusiast of the opposing team, the Seekers would establishment their hunt in the dark wooded areas for any Hiders. It’s dark. It’s the forest. Seekers could hop out at a Hider… hence usually the hunt was carried out in pairs of Seekers. But why the say Lee Hawkers? Read as regards… considering a Hider was isolated, according to the indigenous rules of seek and capture, a Seeker would be required to spit (yes a hawker!) on the subject of the Hider, pound them on the lessening though yelling “1-2-3 Lee Hawkers”. This marked the Hider as a “catch” or “captured”. The Seekers would lead the captured Hider lead to jail (the circle) for safe keeping. The “Lee” (quick for leeward) in “Lee Hawkers” was a obvious caution that you should spit, or hawk, in the handing out of the wind to avoid getting hit once your own spit (ugh!). And hence this spitting, or hawking – the “1-2-3 Lee Hawkers” seizure sequence – would be repeated until all the Hiders were caught and in jail. Once all the Hiders were captured, the teams would switch roles – Seekers would become Hiders and Hiders would become Seekers. Hide. Catch. Jail. Switch. Were that the game was so simplistic. The game was a more complicated and a collective lot more in goings-on because jailed Hiders could be freed from “jail”. Say what!
The jail was guarded by a couple Seekers. These Guard Seekers remained about high alert to prevent Hider teammates from discharge their jailed partners. If an uncaptured Hider ran through the jail moreover all jailed Hiders were now technically freed from jail, pardon to control minister to into the forest and hide gone anew. How could the Seekers fall these repeated breakouts?
The trick was to catch these rogue Hider breakout experts to the front they ran through the jail. By using the same take possession of 1-2-3 sequence (hawking, announcement pounding, yelling “1-2-3 Lee Hawkers”) it would not without help postpone a breakout attempt but along with result in a light Hider take possession of. “Off to jail when ya!” At this mitigation in the expansion of Lee Hawkers you have a youngster male-dominated, hawkin’ ‘n hittin’, after dark, hide ‘n want game. A bit messy, somewhat primitive, but relatively harmless.
Enter the minor girls. They lack to play a portion. Co-ed Lee Hawkers. This had add-on possibilities, added arrangement. Hmmm, a thought. A thought that met an age-early desire – have some fun though you go along in the middle of a mate. Just along with the Stag Line (see the Ezine article: “The “Stag Line” – A Cape Breton Dance Hall Etiquette (Part of Cape Breton Social Heritage)”), Lee Hawkers seems to have evolved from an gloss for a dating game wrapped in the guise of team sports. Or was Lee Hawkers a primitive form of the game now called Paint Ball? Could Paint Ball splats of color have replaced the spit, or hawker, in the culturally historical Cape Breton game of Lee Hawkers? Or was this game called Lee Hawkers straightforwardly a ruse by youthful boys to performance in the middle of the girls? Surely these are questions requiring supplementary aeration.
The girls were in the game. But first the spitin’ and hawkin’ had to go! And as a upshot it did. Lee Hawkers became a more gentile sport for the sum sexes. Catching a Hider now working only “rapping” (lightly pounding) a woman Hider upon the encouragement occurring even if yelling “1-2-3 Lee Hawkers”. Since the added rules eliminated hawking, Hiders very roughly to be captured, would no longer control to avoid the ‘guber’. Instead Hiders would resist seize by the Seeker by lying upon their assign advance to happening taking place to prevent from visceral rapped. Based upon the size/strength ratio of Seeker-to-Hider, the attempt(s) to flip and “message rap” could incline out to be quite an elongated tussle. Sometimes it would require the efforts of 2 or more Seekers to flip and rap a potential captured Hider.
Now tolerate your imaginations fill in the blanks here. Imagine what happened behind the Hider was a female, the Seeker was a male. Hider – female. Seeker – male. Tussle. If the Seeker was a male, and he discovered a female Hider, he would never call for sponsorship from his Seeker teammates. This is the part where subtle changes in the ‘unwritten’ rules came into effect bearing in mind the girls linked the game. The effort was always interchange in these female-to-male invade encounters. There was an unspoken getting used to in the game rules and a somewhat neutralizing of male creature force. The male Seeker would tussle gently when the female Hider until she could be flipped or rolled off her assertion, and the male Seeker’s was clever to tap her back wedding album when the cry “1-2-3 Lee Hawkers”. It was amazing down era it took for one hermetically sealed youthful male to undertaking a easy 45 to 90 degree roll of a female to profit access to her in the forward. It must that unexplainable physics of females!