When you played "Hide and Seek" what did you call when you got back to "Home"?
When I played we called “Olly Olly oxen free” ! What phase did you use to be safe?
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Ollie Ollie in free! (Proper spelling you see.)
Some people learned to say “Ghouls 1 2 3 ” !
^^ Never heard of that one!!!
Same as you, or yelling out “safe” or nothing. Just depended on who was playing.
“Home” was the standard exclamation.
My Gouls one-two-three! (Or if the seeker beat you to it, they’d yell “Gotcher Gouls!” or “Got Jeruba’s Gouls!” and you lost.) I never thought it was “ghouls” or referred to anything supernatural. It was just the proper word for the game. Lots of games had special words.
New England, yes. My mother, being even worse about some word things than I am, tried to make sense of it. She came from farther south and never heard that call until I was old enough to play. She decided that it really meant “got your goals.” I didn’t buy it, though. It was a special word, not ordinary English. Best if not understood, like a spell or charm.
And then when the seeker gave up and the gouls were open, he or she would call “All-ie all-ie entry!” and everyone not found could safely come out of hiding. My mother parsed that one too, and understood that it meant “in free,” but when it was my turn I refused to say it. I had to call what everybody called. No point in being the weird one just because your mother is a word nut.
“Die!”
Ok, it sounds really brutal, but there is a context behind it. When I was young I played a version of hide-and-seek that had a twist: the person being discovered had to run to the place where the seeker had stood and counted. The seeker would also have to run back to that place too. The aim was to hit your hand on the place faster than your opponent and claim the role of the hider in the next game. Whoever put their hand on the place first screamed “die” loudly to announce that they got there first. “Die” here meant “you lose! You are the seeker!”
This version of hide-and-seek was very popular in my childhood. I wonder if they still play that game now.
“Roleevio!”
Not sure of the spelling, but that’s how it sounded. We played team hide & seek and called it Roleevio, which is what we yelled out at home as well.
Home free! Or “Olly Olly oxen free” ! Or home.
@Mimishu1995, that’s exactly the way we played it in a suburb south of Boston in the 1950s. To start, the players gathered around the base (usually a centrally located tree) and then scattered when IT covered their face and started counting. The one who was IT counted to 100 by fives, loudly, while everybody hid, and then called out: “Here I come, ready or not! Anyone found near my base shall be IT.” That meant that the designated IT would be the next seeker.
Then IT would look for hiders and, spotting one, would run to base while the discovered hider raced for it too. Whoever got there first would call ”My Gouls one-two-three” or “Mimi’s Gouls,” depending on who won (hand on the counting spot, the base).
So the trick was to hide as near the base as possible while still being concealed, so you could run out and get your Gouls while IT was looking elsewhere. Then you were safe and not caught, not IT. But of course if IT saw you breaking cover, they would run for base too.
“All-ie all-ie entry” (“in free”) was for when the game was over, IT giving up. Then (I think) the same kid had to be IT again. You only got out of IT by beating someone to the base.
The time to play this was in summer, as twilight faded into dark, in the brief window before we all got called in for the night. It was exciting and almost mysterious, the ritual and the suspense. I wonder if the game has a darker history.
Sometimes it is real neat to remember things you did before you were 10.
Most kid games do have a darker history.
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