Ringolevio

Ringolevio (also spelled ringalevio or ring-a-levio) is a children's game that may be played anywhere but which originates in the teeming streets of New York City, and is known to have been played there at least as far back as the early twentieth century. It is one of the many variations of tag. It requires close teamwork and near-military strategy. 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, as well as Boston-based band Damone's song "On My Mind".

Emmett Grogan wrote a fictionalized autobiography 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.

It seems likely that the game was brought over from the British Isles; it is very similar to a game that is called Bedlams or Relievo. According to Stewart Culin, relievo became ring relievo and then ringoleavio. A similar game, called Prisoner's Base, was played by members of Lewis & Clark's Corps of Discovery against a group of Nez Perce.

The rules of the game

There are two teams. In one version, one team goes off and hides. The other team counts to a predetermined number and then proceeds to search for the first team. In another version, each team has its own "jail", perhaps a park bench or other defensible 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 1960s and 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.

Other variants

In some neighborhoods of New York, the same game was called Ringolario. That's what it was called on Staten Island.

Another version of Ringolario reached the suburbs of southeastern 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 1960s and at least through the 1980s. "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 detention 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. During this same era, in Kingston, also in Ulster County, the game was also called "slip" and involved (at least in the Rondout, New York neighborhood) by having the seeking team members visually identify a hiding team member using the word "dow" and stating the players name and where seen—e.g., "Dow Hank behind the Hahn's garage!" If the seeking player had correctly identified the hiding member's hiding place, that player came and out and went to the jail area to await possible rescue by a teammate or the call of "Ollie Ollie Oxen Free!!!" to end the round if the seeking team had given up.

In Boston and suburbs, players were captured by being taken hold of long enough to say "1-2-3 caught by me, no Relievio rest". Guarding the jail was accepted and one or more members of the pursued team would maneuver to lure the guard away, who was eager to fill his or her jail. If a pursued team member made it into the jail without getting caught, he would yell "Relievio" or "1-2-3 freed by me", to free the captured players. This person could then run away with his teammates or declare "Relievio rest", and remain in the jail to rest, immune from capture. Also, even when the jail was empty, any pursued team member could use the jail declaring "Relievio rest" to rest unbothered by pursuers. If the jail filled with captured players while at rest, the player would have to leave and come back to free them. "Electricity" was a seldom used feature of the game, with it being part of the rules decided upon at the beginning of the game.

In popular culture

In addition to Grogan's eponymous book, the game is mentioned in

• the Little Italy section of Don DeLillo's novel Underworld
• in Daniel Keyes's novel Flowers for Algernon when Charlie remembers a playground scene
• It is also mentioned 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."
• The game was referred to in Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides as ringolevio.
• French singer Little Bob called is 1987 album and the title track Ringolevio.

A 2010 PBS documentary, New York Street Games, featured Ringolevio.

The rapper Notorious B.I.G. mentions the game calling it "coco-levo" in the song "Things Done Changed" on his 1994 album Ready to Die. He notes that the game is no longer played and this is a symptom of social decline in inner city ghettos. Ring-a-levio is mentioned in rapper 2pac's song "Old School".

Ringalario was played in that dusky, 1970's Pennsylvanian manner mention in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ through the mid 1970s as well. The main exception being that "caught caught caught" was substituted for "1-2-3."

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