That Love is all there is, 1
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.
(F.1747/J.1765)
[1] Love:: a game of chance in which one player holds up a certain number of fingers, and the other, without seeing, guesses their number (OED love n.1 11); also called mora or morra. all there:: the sum of all the fingers there.
[2] Love:: preference, favorite; one's favorite number in the game.
[3] freight:: the load, number of fingers stretched.
[4] groove:: routine act, in playing mora.
If any unlearned Person of Stranger should come in, he would certainly think we were bringing up again among our selves the Countrymens Play of holding up our Fingers (dimicatione digitorum, i. e. the Play of Love.) ─ All the Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus, of Roterdam (1725)
Morra, the Italian play of love with the fingers. ─ Iu-Kiao-Li: or, The two Fair Cousins (1827)
The game of Mora . . . is of great antiquity; its invention was ascribed to Helen, who, it is said, was accustomed to play with Paris, the son of Priam. The game may be played by two or four persons, . . . to the arrangement of the players, who then present as many fingers as they choose, calling aloud some particular number; and if either of the numbers thus mentioned agree with the amount of fingers presented, he who named it counts one towards his game, by holding up a finger of the left hand, or, sometimes, a fist or elbow. ─ The Boy's Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations. (1847)
