Ringolevio
Encyclopedia
Ringolevio is a children's game
which may be played anywhere but which originates in the teeming streets of Depression
-era New York City
. It is one of the many variations of tag
. It requires close team work and near-military strategy. In some quarters this game is known as Manhunt
which is really another game with different rules. In Canada
, this game is known as Relievio. In Boston
and Ireland
in the 1960s, it was also called Relievio and is mentioned in Roddy Doyle
's Booker prize-winning novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
and Bill O'Reilly
's book, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity. Emmett Grogan
wrote a book called Ringolevio, which was published in 1972. Echoing the memories of hundreds of thousands who grew up in the neighborhoods of New York, Grogan wrote: "It's a game. A game played on the streets of New York, for as long as anyone can remember. It is called Ringolevio, and the rules are simple. There are two sides, each with the same number of players. There are no time limits, no intermissions, no substitutes and no weapons allowed. There are two jails. There is one objective." The first chapter of this autobiography describes a particularly serious game of ringolevio played by Grogan and his gang.
Anyone on the pursuing side can catch anyone on the pursued side by grabbing hold of them and chanting "Chain chain double chain, no break away." (In the Briarwood & Bay Terrace, Queens, neighborhoods in the 1970s, the required chant was "Ringolevio, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3!" If the person pursued breaks free at any point during this brief recitation, the person is not caught and is considered still "in". If caught, the pursuer takes the prisoner to an area called the jail (the area was called the base in some variations) and the captive is considered "out".
Jail is any confined area, a porch/ stoop (the front steps of a townhouse or Brownstone) or typically between two parked cars or bushes where members of the pursued team are accumulated. Any IN member of a team, can free all OUT team members in jail by barging into the jail without being caught, tagging the captives and shouting, "All in! All in! Free-all!". This means that all members of the team that were in jail are now free and have to be recaught, as they are then back in the game.
Many corruptions of the "all in, all in, all in, free allo" (such as "Olly olly in free
") call at the end of game (when the other side gives up) have been concocted through the past century (not surprising, as the game's rules are passed by word of mouth from older to younger children), but when the jail is lacking just one or two opponents for a full win, the opposing team must concede defeat by announcing that the game is over and that all who were caught are in for free. Then the game starts again.
In some variations, the pursuing team cannot station any player of their team within line of sight of the jail. This is called "babysitting" ("puppy-guarding" is used in some areas). The cry of "babysitting" can be made by anyone in the jail who feels that any member of the opposing team is lingering near the jail and blocking their rescue.
Game ends when one team has caught all the members of the opposing team, at which point the captured team changes roles and now counts while the opponents hide.
Coordinated attacks to free the jail often employ military strategy in their use of terrain and engage in flanking maneuvers and feints that resemble battlefield tactics. The game itself, though, is rarely violent and fights are rare as all the running generally makes both the pursuer and pursued weak with laughter at the point of capture.
Each round of ringolevio lasts about half an hour, but the actual duration of play is a factor of the boundaries of play agreed to at the start of the game as well as the number of players on each side.
Games often have set boundaries of how far from the jail pursued players can go. Some games have been played with city-wide boundaries with up to 40 players. These games had rounds lasting for weeks with suspension of play for half an hour before, during and after school hours. Winners have been accused of going "off the block" when their strategy left them undetected in a one-city-block game. If you strike "the pose of invisibility", you may go unnoticed in an obvious place.
One other variation allows that the players in jail could extend out of the jail by holding hands, making it easier to be freed by your teammates. "Electricity" conducts the tag of the savior to the last player tied to the jail through the chain of held hands.
A variation of Ringolevio, which was called Ringolario, reached the suburbs of South Eastern Pennsylvania around 1970. Two or three neighborhood properties (yards) were set to be the boundaries. The front porch of a home was used as the jail. Sneaking through shrubbery around the porch added to the surprise when team members freed their jailed teammates. The game was played at dusk and often lasted long after dark on summer evenings which added to the military nature of the game. Players would sometimes dress in dark clothes to elude capture. The rules required that the captor cry 1-2-3 Ringolario after grabbing or sometimes tackling (on grass) the pursued.
In Northeast Philadelphia, the variation played was called "Freedom." Players were captured by being taken hold of long enough to say "1-2-3 come with me, you're my prisoner." Players were released from the base/jail when a member of their team was able to sneak close enough to touch a team member and cry "Freedom!" at which point all members of the team rush out in a bunch to make it as difficult as possible for the jail-keeper to recapture them. The jail was a railed porch (the railing looking like the bars of a jail and providing a single approach to guard.) In Olney
, this variation was much more aptly named, "Spring!"
This game was called Spring, as in Spring out of jail, in some Catholic schoolyards in North Philadelphia during the early 60s and at least through the 80s. "Spring!" is all that needed to be yelled as the pursued team member touched the base to release all his members out of jail by running in uncaptured. At Saint Henry parish, which was located at 5th and Cayuga, the words used by the pursuing team to capture a member of the pursued team was "One, Two, Three Your My Man, no breaksies". The jail was simply a large metal grate on the ground of one end of the schoolyard. The jail was protected from Springing by members standing in front of the grate. In a twist not noted elsewhere, the pursued team had a safe place where they could not be captured by simply holding on to a window grate over a window at the other end of the schoolyard. Also, if a pursued team member was holding on to the safety area and they in turn were holding hands with a team member not touching the safety grid, that team member was also safe because of "Electricity".
At a summer resort in Ulster County ca. 1968-76, the game was called "slip", the call required to secure a capture was "slip one two three", the dentention area was "base", the play area was a two-acre premise, and considerable time was spent debating the rules that would apply, including the permissibility of "base sitting", i.e. "babysitting" as described above. The base was a swingset and each player detained at the base was generally required to be in physical contact with it. As above, the games generally started around dusk and could continue for hours after dark. While rough play, anger or fighting could occasionally occur, weakness with laughter, or sheer fatigue, would often accompany physical contact between players as indicated above.
section of Don DeLillo
's novel Underworld
and, as ring-a-levio and ring-a-leary-o, in George Carlin
's autobiography Last Words
. A game of ringolevio also figures prominently in the Twilight Zone episode "The Incredible World of Horace Ford."
A 2010 PBS documentary, New York Street Games
, featured Ringolevio.
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
which may be played anywhere but which originates in the teeming streets of Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
-era New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. It is one of the many variations of tag
Tag (game)
Tag is a playground game played worldwide that involves one or more players chasing other players in an attempt to tag or touch them, usually with their fingers. There are many variations...
. It requires close team work and near-military strategy. In some quarters this game is known as Manhunt
Manhunt (people game)
Manhunt refers to a number of variations on the game of tag. The goal is to avoid being tagged by anyone designated as "it", or to tag anyone who has not been tagged. Some variations include teams and point scoring. Many variants exist...
which is really another game with different rules. In Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, this game is known as Relievio. In Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
in the 1960s, it was also called Relievio and is mentioned in Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993....
's Booker prize-winning novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle. It won the Booker Prize in 1993. The story is about a 10 year old boy and events that happen within his age group...
and Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)
William James "Bill" O'Reilly, Jr. is an American television host, author, syndicated columnist and political commentator. He is the host of the political commentary program The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, which is the most watched cable news television program on American television...
's book, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity. Emmett Grogan
Emmett Grogan
Emmett Grogan was a founder of the Diggers, a radical community-action group of Improv actors in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California...
wrote a book called Ringolevio, which was published in 1972. Echoing the memories of hundreds of thousands who grew up in the neighborhoods of New York, Grogan wrote: "It's a game. A game played on the streets of New York, for as long as anyone can remember. It is called Ringolevio, and the rules are simple. There are two sides, each with the same number of players. There are no time limits, no intermissions, no substitutes and no weapons allowed. There are two jails. There is one objective." The first chapter of this autobiography describes a particularly serious game of ringolevio played by Grogan and his gang.
The rules of the game
There are two teams. In one version, one team goes off and hides. The other team counts to some number like 30 and then goes looking for them. In another version, each team has its own "jail", perhaps a park bench or other defendable turf. In Bay Terrace, Queens, both teams had a park bench jail, and whichever team could capture all of the other team's members, won. Often, the game would go on so long that it was called on account of darkness.Anyone on the pursuing side can catch anyone on the pursued side by grabbing hold of them and chanting "Chain chain double chain, no break away." (In the Briarwood & Bay Terrace, Queens, neighborhoods in the 1970s, the required chant was "Ringolevio, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3!" If the person pursued breaks free at any point during this brief recitation, the person is not caught and is considered still "in". If caught, the pursuer takes the prisoner to an area called the jail (the area was called the base in some variations) and the captive is considered "out".
Jail is any confined area, a porch/ stoop (the front steps of a townhouse or Brownstone) or typically between two parked cars or bushes where members of the pursued team are accumulated. Any IN member of a team, can free all OUT team members in jail by barging into the jail without being caught, tagging the captives and shouting, "All in! All in! Free-all!". This means that all members of the team that were in jail are now free and have to be recaught, as they are then back in the game.
Many corruptions of the "all in, all in, all in, free allo" (such as "Olly olly in free
Olly Olly Oxen Free
Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in such children's games as hide and seek to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that the position of the sides in a game has changed ,...
") call at the end of game (when the other side gives up) have been concocted through the past century (not surprising, as the game's rules are passed by word of mouth from older to younger children), but when the jail is lacking just one or two opponents for a full win, the opposing team must concede defeat by announcing that the game is over and that all who were caught are in for free. Then the game starts again.
In some variations, the pursuing team cannot station any player of their team within line of sight of the jail. This is called "babysitting" ("puppy-guarding" is used in some areas). The cry of "babysitting" can be made by anyone in the jail who feels that any member of the opposing team is lingering near the jail and blocking their rescue.
Game ends when one team has caught all the members of the opposing team, at which point the captured team changes roles and now counts while the opponents hide.
Coordinated attacks to free the jail often employ military strategy in their use of terrain and engage in flanking maneuvers and feints that resemble battlefield tactics. The game itself, though, is rarely violent and fights are rare as all the running generally makes both the pursuer and pursued weak with laughter at the point of capture.
Each round of ringolevio lasts about half an hour, but the actual duration of play is a factor of the boundaries of play agreed to at the start of the game as well as the number of players on each side.
Games often have set boundaries of how far from the jail pursued players can go. Some games have been played with city-wide boundaries with up to 40 players. These games had rounds lasting for weeks with suspension of play for half an hour before, during and after school hours. Winners have been accused of going "off the block" when their strategy left them undetected in a one-city-block game. If you strike "the pose of invisibility", you may go unnoticed in an obvious place.
One other variation allows that the players in jail could extend out of the jail by holding hands, making it easier to be freed by your teammates. "Electricity" conducts the tag of the savior to the last player tied to the jail through the chain of held hands.
Other variants
In some neighborhoods of New York, the same game was called Ringolario. That's what it was called on Staten Island.A variation of Ringolevio, which was called Ringolario, reached the suburbs of South Eastern Pennsylvania around 1970. Two or three neighborhood properties (yards) were set to be the boundaries. The front porch of a home was used as the jail. Sneaking through shrubbery around the porch added to the surprise when team members freed their jailed teammates. The game was played at dusk and often lasted long after dark on summer evenings which added to the military nature of the game. Players would sometimes dress in dark clothes to elude capture. The rules required that the captor cry 1-2-3 Ringolario after grabbing or sometimes tackling (on grass) the pursued.
In Northeast Philadelphia, the variation played was called "Freedom." Players were captured by being taken hold of long enough to say "1-2-3 come with me, you're my prisoner." Players were released from the base/jail when a member of their team was able to sneak close enough to touch a team member and cry "Freedom!" at which point all members of the team rush out in a bunch to make it as difficult as possible for the jail-keeper to recapture them. The jail was a railed porch (the railing looking like the bars of a jail and providing a single approach to guard.) In Olney
Olney, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Olney is a neighborhood in the North Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is roughly bounded by the Roosevelt Boulevard to the south, Tacony Creek to the east, Godfrey Avenue to the north, and the railroad right-of-way west of Sixth Street to the west.Although...
, this variation was much more aptly named, "Spring!"
This game was called Spring, as in Spring out of jail, in some Catholic schoolyards in North Philadelphia during the early 60s and at least through the 80s. "Spring!" is all that needed to be yelled as the pursued team member touched the base to release all his members out of jail by running in uncaptured. At Saint Henry parish, which was located at 5th and Cayuga, the words used by the pursuing team to capture a member of the pursued team was "One, Two, Three Your My Man, no breaksies". The jail was simply a large metal grate on the ground of one end of the schoolyard. The jail was protected from Springing by members standing in front of the grate. In a twist not noted elsewhere, the pursued team had a safe place where they could not be captured by simply holding on to a window grate over a window at the other end of the schoolyard. Also, if a pursued team member was holding on to the safety area and they in turn were holding hands with a team member not touching the safety grid, that team member was also safe because of "Electricity".
At a summer resort in Ulster County ca. 1968-76, the game was called "slip", the call required to secure a capture was "slip one two three", the dentention area was "base", the play area was a two-acre premise, and considerable time was spent debating the rules that would apply, including the permissibility of "base sitting", i.e. "babysitting" as described above. The base was a swingset and each player detained at the base was generally required to be in physical contact with it. As above, the games generally started around dusk and could continue for hours after dark. While rough play, anger or fighting could occasionally occur, weakness with laughter, or sheer fatigue, would often accompany physical contact between players as indicated above.
In Popular Culture
In addition to Grogan's eponymous book, the game is mentioned in the Little ItalyLittle Italy, Manhattan
Little Italy is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, New York City, once known for its large population of Italians. Today the neighborhood of Little Italy consists of Italian stores and restaurants.-Historical area:...
section of Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...
's novel Underworld
Underworld (DeLillo novel)
Underworld is a postmodern novel published in 1997 by Don DeLillo. It was nominated for the National Book Award, was a best-seller, and is one of DeLillo's better-known novels....
and, as ring-a-levio and ring-a-leary-o, in George Carlin
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, actor and author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums....
's autobiography Last Words
Last Words (book)
Last Words is an autobiography by American stand-up comedian George Carlin. It was published on November 10, 2009. In Last Words George Carlin tells the story of his life from birth to his final years. He also wrote a special parting gift to the world. The book contains photos taken throughout...
. A game of ringolevio also figures prominently in the Twilight Zone episode "The Incredible World of Horace Ford."
A 2010 PBS documentary, New York Street Games
New York Street Games (film)
New York Street Games is a 2010 documentary film directed by Matt Levy about children's games played by kids in New York City for centuries. The games are fondly remembered by people who grew up in the city. Current and historical documentary footage shows children playing these games...
, featured Ringolevio.