Cat's Cradle Game History

Cats Cradlegets its name from the childrens game.

Cat's cradle game history. It is well known in China Korea Japan the Philippines and Borneo. Along with its cousins -- Jacobs ladder cup and saucer crows feet -- it is played by schoolchildren everywhere. The art of making pictures or telling stories with string and your hands or sometimes feet.

As Vonnegut says For maybe a hundred thousand years or more grownups have been waving tangles of string in their childrens faces to form nothing but a bunch of Xs between somebodys hands 165-166. Using simply one string - alone in pairs or in groups - across times and cultures humans have created figures invented stories and let their imagination soar. It is one of the oldest examples of human play and thus ties in with the idea that the book though grounded in a specific historical moment is principally concerned with the entirety of the human story.

CATS CRADLE is one of the worlds simplest string games. Some sources say that children played Cats Cradle in England as early as 1782. Haddon has pointed out the familiar game of cats-cradle probably had its origin in Asia whence it was introduced into Europe.

The question of who first played cats cradle the childrens game in which two players alternately take from each others fingers an intertwined cord so as always to produce a symmetrical figure is almost as contentious as the origin of its name. In a literal sense a cats cradle is a game played with string in which each player must maneuver their fingers to create different images one of which is the cats cradle. String figures are a storytelling tradition in many cultures around the world including among Arctic Indigenous Peoples Aboriginal.

The use of cats in the cradle to describe something dangerous appears to come from an old wives tale that if allowed into its crib a cat would kill an infant by sucking out its breath. Cats Cradle has moved a few times in its 50 years including to locations on Franklin and Rosemary streets in Chapel Hill. String games such as Cats Cradle have been played around the world for thousands if not millions of years.

That certainly sounds far-fetched today but it was a commonly held superstition back in the 1600s and 1700s. Cats Cradle String Games by Camilla Gryski 1983. Known as fan sheng in China and Jack in the Pulpit in the UK its a simple game that requires teamwork and offers a great sense of satisfaction when mastered.