"Hunc over de" clubs, NY 1736?

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>... I had to use Wikipedia to remind myself what "I spy"
>is.  But did the name mean the same game in 1892?

Probably not. It was usually described as an outdoors hide-and-seek game.

>How does "I spy"
>(of today) oppose to something called "maintain truth"?

Don't know. Don't know how hide-and-seek would oppose it either.

>And finally -- who can divine the relationship between a game like "I
>spy" and the very possibly salacious activities inquired about by
>ladies between 15 and 50 in my 1736 newspaper letter?

There are boy-girl variants of hide-and-seek -- IIRC -- in which
(e.g.) when the man finds the hiding woman (could be vice versa) he
is supposed to hide with her: maybe no more salacious than ballroom
dancing, but still it makes a sort of a couple, I guess.

>Or relate "I
>spy" to the somewhat casual mention in connection with the men's
>"Hunc over de" club that near to demolished the ladies' tea table,
>and became as warm as scallopt Oysters?

My casual impression is that the tea table demolition might refer
simply to voracious eating, the warmth simply to heated political
discussions ("party" = "partisanship" or so, I think).

I have put a question on Dave Wilton's Wordorigins.org discussion
board; some participants there have shown some familiarity with Dutch
in the past.

-- Doug Wilson


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