GadgetsRme The original Red Rover
Origin of the game
Originally, Red Rover was a regular tag and running game with several players on one side and one person (the "Red Rover") placed in the center of the playing field. The person in the center calls "Red Rover, Red Rover, let [player's name] come over!" to challenge and catch one of the players who tries to reach the other side of the playing area. If the Red Rover succeeds they both return to the center. Each player tagged joins the center and helps tag the others.
According to Katherine Barber, the name of the game could be based on the novel of The Red Rover by New York author James Fenimore Cooper. It should be of no surprise that – for a chasing game – children prefer the name of a pirate who ravages the British seas.
The game was first recorded in New York in 1891 in Stewart Culin's publication Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N. Y.. Until the 1940s, various descriptions of this version of Red Rover have been published, e. g. in 1907 in Dorothea Frances Canfield's book What Shall We Do Now? Five Hundred Games and Pastimes. In the book Canfield compared Red Rover with the German game of Black Man.[
