INTRODUCTORY. from Beni Hassan. "We must speak by the card or Hamlet. OWEVER doubtful may be the origin of the game of bowls, lexicographers agree that the words bowle (Old English), and bowl of the present day, are derived from bulla, Latin for bubble. The following have all a bearing on the subject: in French we have boule, bowl; balle, ball; billes, billiard-balls and marbles; (Scotch for marbles, bools); Icelandic, böllr; Old High German, balla and palla; Spanish, bala; Italian, balla, and the Greek opaipa, pila, all meaning ball. Walker defines to bow, to bend sideways (with a bias); bowlder, a round mass of rock; bowl, a round mass rolled along the ground, and ball, anything made in a round form. Conning over the derivations, it is curious to note how closely allied are the words ball and bowl; and how easy is the transition of the game of ball to that of A bowls, the one more or less in the air, the other on the ground. Strutt,' an authority at the beginning of the present century on all games, says that bowling was an invention of the Middle Ages, and he had traced it back to the thirteenth century. This is no doubt true regarding the forms of the game as he knew it (the quaint illustrations annexed show considerable variation), but sculptured and painted antiquities of Ancient Greece and Egypt distinctly establish a fact, that games consisting of throwing and rolling balls and other circular objects were quite common thousands of years ago. Meagre is the information regarding their methods of play and laws of the games. It is also difficult to reconcile the diverse opinions of early writers and their translators; but certainly Strutt was not infallible. He mentions draughts as a modern invention, whereas on the walls of the palace of Rameses at Thebes is depicted 1Sports and Pastimes, by J. Strutt. Rameses III. playing a game, which Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson, the emi nent Egyptologist, Draughtmen. 1. From declares to be draughts, the forerunner of chess.1 The public at large are vastly indebted to such men, whose zeal in research and interpretations of Sculptures. 2. From Thebes, of wood. In Posession of 2 Sir G. Wilkinson the hieroglyphics Ramses III. playing Thebes at droughts in the In another represetaion ners and customs of so ancient a people, back to a Balls about three inches in diameter, made of leather 1 Dámeh, a game like our draughts, is played in Egypt at the present day. Perhaps the Scotch dambrod has some connection. Pliny says the art of painting and the game of ball were invented in Egypt. or skins, sewed with string and stuffed with bran or husks of corn, have been found in the tombs. Some in the British Museum are made of rush-stalks, plaited together into a ball and covered with leather; others, of more immediate interest to a bowler, are a little smaller and made of porcelain gaily painted (see fig. 1 in illustration). These earthenware balls it is reasonable to suppose were played on the ground. To play with them in the same manner as the stuffed ball would render the amusement, to say the least, risky, when their weight is considered. It is quite possible they were indoor toys of the young Egyptians, like our carpet-balls, and if this supposition is anywhere near the truth, our out-door game of bowls is only a variation of the same form of pastime. figure moves" and in the lower one the under jaw of the animal moves. It may also interest bowlers' bairns to know that the ancient Egyptian children had dolls, and played at games similar to our "Buck! buck! how many fingers do I hold up?" "odds and evens," "chucks," bools," etc. For the game of ball we have incontestable evidence in the mural decorations of the tombs and palaces. In |