Despite living in an age of computer games and videos, some of today's youngsters are still getting as much pleasure out of a more traditional pastime as their parents and grandparents did before them.

It never took long for a game of 'allies' to draw a crowd on a Good Friday.

Adults in the neighbourhood would go home and collect their marbles - stored in a tin, bottle or sock - and spend the next few hours trying to add to their collection at somebody else's expense. It is a part of the Bermudian culture that seems to be dying, along with the game of tops, as Good Friday is more celebrated by the flying of kites and overindulging on fish cakes and hot cross buns.

But marbles hasn't exactly died as Royal Gazette photographer Tamell Simons discovered during last week's holiday when he wandered down to Victor Scott School field and found a group of young children playing.

Bermuda's older residents call it 'allies', but whatever the name it is a sight author, historian, former educator and now politician Dale Butler likes to see.

He has written about Bermuda's culture in several books and in 'The Legend of Codfish and Potatoes', Mr. Butler wrote about the history of marbles and tops. He explained how they were given as Christmas gifts and used by children every day in school and at home from January until Good Friday.

He wrote: "Marbles had numerous names: smallies, pee-wee, bongy, pinky and the British originally brought them to Bermuda. Rules vary from parish to parish and include banking, kill you and rounding, to name a few. All games start with a circle and links on a dirt surface. On Good Friday, everyone in the neighbourhood would come out to play, including grandmothers. Some Bermudians remember breaking the bottom of a green liquor bottle to take out a marble called a "wardie" or "wally". In Surrey and Sussex, England, Good Friday used to be known as Marbles Day."

The popular game isn't played much these days, for a number of reasons, said Mr. Butler who tried to develop a passion for marbles in young children when he was a school principal.

"All of the Christmas gifts, which usually consisted of marbles, tops and skipping ropes, you would use in January and February and in those days you didn't have day camps so in your yard you played your marbles, jumped your rope, spun your top and then you picked your loquats," said Mr. Butler, no doubt speaking from his own experience as a boy.

"Girls used to also play jacks and sometimes boys, to annoy them, would join in. The Christmas gift given to girls would be jacks and a doll baby. That's how kids got to play 'doctor' and 'house'."

The idea of marbles is to win as many of the marbles in the ring as possible and avoid getting 'killed', which means you have to give back all the marbles you won in that game. Different rules were adopted to make it competitive and exciting.

"It was something on Good Friday where grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, little children...everybody came out to play and it crossed age barriers," said Mr. Butler.

'It's dying because the schools took an affront to it, some schools wouldn't allow it and put an end to it. But the number one reason is we don't have yards anymore, everybody has a lawn. With marbles you need a dirt yard to draw the ring and a line. Now people have little yards, but have tarmac or grass.

"Number two is kids tend to play inside more, they are more electronically and technologically focused and kids tend to have more structured activity. They have either music lessons, Spanish or French class or sailing lessons. We didn't have all those things, so we had to be much more innovative."

Mr. Butler said he made activities like marbles a part of the programme at his school, Dellwood Primary.

"When I was a principal it was compulsory that kids bought marbles to school," he said, adding that even the art of spinning a top is gradually dying.

"Anybody who can spin a top now would be over the age of 40!"