cratch

A truly historic game taught by children to each other, is what is called cats-cradle or cratch-cradle.
Child Life in Colonial Days|Alice Morse Earle
If Hone's derivation of the game and its meaning is true, cratch-cradle is the correct name.
Child Life in Colonial Days|Alice Morse Earle
Coiros are beeves fattened at the cratch in ox-stalls, or in the fresh guimo meadows.
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete.|Francois Rabelais
If the taile of a wolfe be hung in the cratch of Oxen, they can never eat their meate.
Curious Creatures in Zoology|John Ashton

It has not occupied a bacon-cratch or a bread-and-cheese cupboard.
The Great North Road: York to Edinburgh|Charles G. Harper

British Dictionary definitions for cratch

cratch

/ (krætʃ) /

noun

a rack for holding fodder for cattle, etc

Word Origin for cratch

C14: from Old French: crèche

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012