thanks for your help about the Jacks rhymes and actually yes a sort of equivalent game was in France also. We call this ” play at knuckle bones” and as you figure , instead of jacks , things looking like sort of knuckle bones were thrown in the air but I don’t remember neither the material nor the the game itself. I guess this was smething from the previous generations.

I didn’t know “Nimble Jack” of nursery rhyme fame ever showed up in the game of jacks! Clearly more research is needed on this topic. This seems to be a credible explanation of the origin of “Jack be nimble,” though… http://www.rooneydesign.com/JackBeNimble.html

Dear French person, Thanks for writing. The “Jack” in the “Jack be nimble” rhyme refers to a fictional person named Jack. “Jacks” is a game played with little metal things (a “jack”) and a ball. It is described in detail at the top of this discussion. A brief translation dictionary: “One-zees”, “two-zees”, etc., refers to the number of jacks you need to pick up. Non-standard English numbers like this is used in many street games. I don’t know if there’s a French equivalent (“trois-cize”?); it’s probably roughtly equivalent to “premiere, deuxieme, troisieme”, etc. Do they play anything like this in France? Let us know! -Hugh McNally hmcnally [at] streetplay [dot] com

I am a librarian who has been asked to provide a patron with the words to a jacks rhyme. She says it starts with onesies and works up to tenzies but there is a little rhyme that you say each time along with the number of jacks you’re pickin up. Anyone know this rhyme?