Talk:Snap-dragon (game)

why scotland

why is scotland specified in the opening paragraph as one of the countries it didn't spread to, is there some signifigance

Stated outright in the sources provided, probably to make a distinction twixt the English and Scottish.86.28.138.177 (talk) 12:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Spelling

A minor point, but I feel the word would be better spelt without the hyphen, which makes it look oddly pedantic and old-fashioned. In modern English it's bound to be more common without. I'd also suggest it should be shown at Flapdragon with the other forms redirecting there, since I've much more often seen it called that than snapdragon, but then perhaps I'm biased! Flapdragon 01:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I chose Snap-dragon as the primary name mainly because there seemed to be a slight majority using a hyphen in the sources (Strut, Dryden, Carroll, and Sandys all use 'snap-dragon'); and of the others most use snapdragon unhyphenated (Faraday, Lingua, Brooks, and Blain) or as two separate words (Grose). It seems to me that flap-dragon appears to be the original and older term, but one that somewhere in the early-to-mid 18th Century evolved to 'snap' instead, and seeing as most of the article was about the Victorian practice of the game I made the completely arbitrary decision to put it here instead :) Ziggurat 02:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Children's game?

It's not clear what the basis is for the claim that this is a children's game. Grose says that "the company scramble for the raisins". It might be faintly silly or childish, but there's nothing in the article or any definitions I've seem to show that it's played only or mainly by children, let alone unsupervised, as the term "children's game" would seem to imply -- makes me think of marbles or or hopscotch or some such. After all, it does involve strong drink and naked flame! Flapdragon 01:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Good point, the evidence that it's a children's game is much more scarce than the evidence that it was a game played by children! I'll just go edit that out... Ziggurat 03:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, I'm not convinced of the hard-and-fast division the article currently implies between the "children's game" involving swallowing burning raisins (etc) on the one hand, and the "drinking game" involving drinking while avoiding a flame. To my mind they're both just variations on messing around with spirits and flames. After all, the brandy in the bowl was surely drunk at the end of the game with the raisins, and presumably not by children. I think the players are sometimes described as snatching the raisins directly with their mouths, as the dragon is doing in the picture; while this would seem difficult (as well as dangerous) if not improbable, it blurs the boundaries between the "children's" and "drinking" games.

It seems to me that the original practice was one not by children but by gallants and rakehells (there's an entry in Brewer's Phrase and Fable to that effect), and that it was carried out in the kind of seedy bars where you can imagine a young Prince Hal, but all of the Victorian sources identify it specifically as a parlour game (and traditionally a Christmas one) with fairly standard rules and practices, so I think the distinction is valid Ziggurat 03:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Finally (and this is getting really picky, but) in "children often burnt their hands or mouths playing this game (Strutt, 1903), which led to the practice dying out in the early 20th century" can we be sure of a causal relationship? Who knows why the game really died out? OK, enough nitpicking for now. Flapdragon 02:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the evidence for a causal link is specious. Gonna go edit that... Ziggurat 03:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

hm, so is the idea here that the "snatching" is done with the mouth, meaning you have to plunge your head into the flames, or may you use your hands? 09:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)~

The headfirst idea seems unlikely, but perhaps you could grab a raisin from the lip of the bowl? But this is just speculation on my part. Flapdragon 16:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The "children" bit has made its way to the Main Page today. I find the connection spurious. The article cites the Strutt reference for this, but the actual content of the reference [1] only uses the phrase "the young people of both sexes". To me this is much more likely to indicate late teens or early 20s; the age around which young adults are given the freedom to do stupid daring things to themselves. The fact that it particularly mentions "of both sexes" suggests that it was a young people's liquored-up party game. Something akin to, say, beer-shooting. It's also worth noting that the Strutt doc mentions "burning their hands", meaning that this is not a daredevil's bobbing-for-apples game; hands were used to pick out the raisins, which were plenty hot (and stickily juicy), enough to scald the mouth once broken open during eating. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 18:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

"Master Sandy's Snapdragon" features it as a game played by people of all ages, including children; Sandys as a game for "juvenile parties"; "young folks" from Strutt; the footnote in The Annotated Alice (which I didn't actually use in the article, but which pointed me to the practice in the first place) specifies children. But the reason I used Strutt as the reference was that the chapter that talks about Snapdragons is headed "POPULAR MANLY PASTIMES IMITATED BY CHILDREN", and the pastimes in that chapter all refer to children's activities. I think there's quite sufficient evidence that it was played by children, and this is reflected in the Main Page DYK; it was not, however, exclusively played by children, so it's certainly better to characterise it as a family game. Ziggurat 20:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Snapdragon has died out?

Well not entirely.... My family still play this from time to time, mostly around Christmas and New Year (and we call it snapdragon). Anyone managing to transport a still-burning raisin to their mouth gets an admiring reaction (it's not easy to do). I'm pleased to say that we have had no incidences of burn injuries!88.110.106.224 11:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)Claire PS We use fingers to pick the raisins out - use of the mouth would surely be injurious to hairstyles let alone anything else... Further, the whole family play and I can remember doing so (with some trepidation) as a fairly small child - I'd call it a "family game" 88.110.106.224 11:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)Claire

So the flame is not really hot enough to cause injury? Or perhaps it would, if you weren't quick enough and allowed it to linger on the skin? (a bit like a hot equivalent of handling dry ice) Flapdragon 16:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I was hoping someone could clarify the heat of the flame, because one or two sources suggest that brandy does not in fact burn at a high enough temperature to burn your skin (as long as you're fast!). I'd love to see a reliable source on this, otherwise it's going to have to be a personal experiment... Ziggurat 19:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I played this game as a child when visiting my grandparents who were born in the US but who both had English parents. We called the game "Raisin Snatch" and it was played at Christmas after dinner. Grandmother heated up a large heatproof platter and plumped the raisins in hot water. The drained raisins were spread on the hot platter and then brandy was poured over the raisins. The lights were turned out and my grandpa would carry the platter to the table with the raisins in flames. The goal was to snatch all of the raisins off the platter before the flames went out. The alcohol flame was not all that hot but it was still exciting and scary to stick your hands in the flames and try to get the raisins in your mouth before the flames went out. I've introduced my children to this game and hope they will carry the tradition on into the future. On several Christmases I have been on vacation and have introduced this game to my fellow travelers in Nepal and Peru. I always assumed the game had some relationship to the English flaming Plum Pudding. Making a plum pudding is alot of work so I imagined someone proclaiming, "Skip the pudding, let's just flame the raisins!" By the way, in my family, there was no drinking of the brandy, and the alcohol burned off leaving just the taste of the liquor. My grandmother, a staunch Methodist, would not have allowed us to play this game if she thought we were actually drinking alcohol.24.5.152.132 (talk) 06:18, 2 December 2008 (UTC)deanna statler

My family has played this continuously through the generations, and still continues to. We came out of Sheffield area in England, and have since spread to Canada and the US. I glad to hear others still know what it is to stir up the fire and eat hot raisins. We are told a wish would come true if we got the raisins into our mouths still flaming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flatcan (talk • contribs) 23:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I can concur with the above. My family has also played this game and still does. Since the 1950s I personally have played it on Christmas Eve in the Great Hall at Kincardine Castle in Scotland's Royal Deeside. In the early days the only light was from the log fire and the flaming brandy as the Christmas Tree was only lit by candles and thus the lit tree was a rather brief one-off event. We had to make sure the raisins were still flaming when they went into our mouths and as children were told we must eat at least twelve in this way to ensure we had 12 lucky months ahead of us. We kept eating until the flames died out and by then the brandy wasn't worth drinking as the alcohol had burned off. Even as children we worked that one out pretty quickly. We last played the game on 24th December 2011.86.141.110.19 (talk) 17:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The Golden Raisin

In another tradition, one of the raisins contains a gold button and becomes 'the lucky raisin'.

A raisin containing a button? Come on! Is that physically possible? Anyway, did people really have gold buttons? Perhaps the writer meant gold-coloured. Flapdragon 17:04, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

We always use quite large raisins - I think they're muscat? Not sure. I think this is because normal-size ones would be quite hard to pick up fast enough. Anyhow, I think they would be large enough to put a small button inside.88.110.106.224 23:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC)Claire

English? British?

I deleted the "English" bit in an earlier edit (I should really have said so) because there didn't seem to be any evidence that the game wasn't played outside England, which on the face of it looked unlikely; the timeframe then given ("Georgian and Victorian") was excessively restrictive and given that the same might be true of the geographical restriction, it seemed safer not to specify a country. I considered changing it to "British" but that would just have been guesswork. However, it does seem unlikely that the game was not played elsewhere. The only light I can shed is that the entry for snapdragon in Harrap's New Standard French and English Dictionary (first published 1939, this from the 1980 edition) is "jeu (de Noël) qui consiste à happer des raisins sec dans du cognac flambant et à les manger touts chauds" [(Christmas) game consisting of grabbing raisins out of burning brandy and eating them hot]. Though this doesn't prove the game was unknown in France, it shows at least that the editors were unable to find a French translation. In the absence of reliable info, I'd say it's probably better to leave the geography unspecified. Flapdragon 19:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I specified English instead of British because Chambers states explicitly that the game is virtually unknown in Scotland. My French dictionaries offered no suggestions as to a French term - 'gueule-de-loup' (roughly Mouth of the Wolf) is used for the flower, but there are no web cross-references between 'gueule-de-loup' and 'raisin sec'. The Harraps entry is a find, though! Pending further investigation, not specifying nationality seems the best course. Ziggurat 20:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the simplest approach would be to leave an unspoken implication that it is British, and mention the interesting point made by Chambers (a Scottish publisher, so they should know!)? Otherwise we'd get horribly bogged down in questions of exactly which bits of the UK practised it. Actually I could believe that it was just England: Wales has different (cheaper!) Christmas customs, and perhaps Scotland would disapprove of such profligacy with expensive foreign liquor?! Flapdragon 20:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC) Still practiced, growing up third-generation Canadian, and now my kids, raised in the States, practice it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flatcan (talk • contribs) 23:38, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

So what are those flowers?

I thought snap-dragons were a flower. If not, what are those flowers called that people have been calling "Snap-dragons"?--Redandready 16:07, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Snap-dragon flowers

I remember calling the antirrhinum flower a 'snap-dragon' or 'bunny-rabbit' as a kid (back in the 1950s). I think the 'bunny-rabbit' name I learned from my grand-mother N790 (talk) 10:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

If you type 'snapdragon' or 'snap-dragon' into the Wikipedia search box you'll be sent to this page. Ziggurat 21:19, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Literary References

I think it would help if this section was rearranged, or if reference was made to the drinking version of the game earlier on. As it stands, the literary quotations don't make sense until one has read on to the description of the old version of the game. Melaena (talk) 11:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Delisting

Just popped in to note that the "first printed mention" sections are derived from the OED - uncited, but not original research. which may have led to the practice mostly dying out in the early 20th century is speculation and should be removed. I'm no longer actively editing, but if someone else wants to pick up the ball here I'd welcome it.

Ziggurat 03:12, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Safety

Although I'm not quite brave enough to use fingers, I can confirm that this is still a fun game to play using metal forks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.171.29 (talk) 01:14, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

"Cameron clan of Ontario" notability?

The last sentence in the first paragraph struck me as peculiar, and potentially out of place. Is the "Cameron Clan" somehow notable? (Do they have their own wiki article I may be missing?). Is there annual event well documented previously that a citation could be included? Thanks for the interesting content though! Cheers! --Elfabet (talk) 18:27, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

It is a game?

.. or rather a tradition of eating? There seems to be no rules, no winner, no play, only an effort to eat. If it is otherwise, please clarify it somewhere in the article. (for a definition of what consists a game on can also refer to Game )