Cats Cradle

The origin of name "cat's cradle" may have come from a corruption of cratch-cradle, or manger cradle . The French word for manger is crèche, and cattle feed racks are still known as cratches. The "manger cradle" is significant in the nativity; Jesus was born in a barn and laid in a manger because there was no cradle. In an 1858 Punch Cartoon it is referred to as "Scratch Cradle". Different cultures have different names for the game, and often different names for the individual figures. (For instance, the Russians call the whole game simply "the game of string" and the "diamonds" pattern a "carpet", and have names like "field", "fish" and "sawhorse" for all other figures. The cat isn't ever mentioned, but the cradle is, though it's the initial figure that is called so.)

Cat's cradle is probably one of humanity's oldest games, and is spread among an astonishing variety of cultures even so unrelated as Europeans and Dyaks of Indonesia; Alfred Wallace who, while traveling in Borneo, thought of amusing the Dyak youths with a novel game with string, was in turn very surprised when they proved to be familiar with it and had shown him some figures and transitions that he himself didn't know. The anthropologist Louis Leakey has also described his use of this game to obtain the cooperation of Sub-Saharan African tribes otherwise unfamiliar with, and justifiably suspicious of, European.