Puslapio vaizdai
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pin was called the king-pin and was a little taller than

the others.1

Marbles (in Scotland, bools) has been a pastime of men and children for ages. The ancients used scraps of marble, and costly crystals, to make them; hence the name. The exceeding beauty of the polylithic playthings is very attractive.

Sueton, in his life of Augustus, mentions the famous Roman, when a boy, playing a game like marbles with his Moorish companions. Round nuts were used: cum nucibus.

That larger masses of stone were made into balls and used in various games is beyond question, and the beginning of the fifteenth century is about the time bowls were first made of wood. Reference to stone bowls being used by the citizens of London is made by Fitzsteven.2

In Syria the game of marbles is very ancient and is still popular. It is played on a prepared wooden floor. The Chinese have also a very old game called Tee-Tchu, which is played with a large sized marble being shot along the ground, to a mark, by the toes, the mark being sometimes another marble, resembling much our game of bowls. Hindoo boys play marbles in the hot season, and the girls have games in the cold season not unlike our croquet, called Lapac-danda and Girli-danda.

Trundling the hoop and wheel occupied a prominent position as a pastime in early ages among Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Anglo-Saxons. The

1 Charles Second's treatment at the hands of the Roundheads is here alluded to.

* Stow's Survey of London, 1720.

THE HOOP
INJAPAN

three small drawings at the end of this chapter are engraved antique gems in the Stosch collection, Berlin,' and show naked boys running with the trochus or hoop. Contests took place with the trochus. In the centre gem there is, presumably, a laurel branch, a jar of oil (it was the custom to anoint the athletes in the games), and a trochus. Curiously

enough the hoop is called bow in many parts of England.

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features of our game of bowls; and notwithstanding the ambiguity among early writers regarding the quoit and discus, the opinion may be advanced that the spherical quoit was the immediate progenitor of the bowle.

1 From W. Smith's Greek and Roman Antiquities.

Engraved gems

Stosch Collection Berlin.

Strutt

HJ.D.

CHAPTER III.

THE GAME IN ENGLAND.

THE
HE introduction of the game of bowls in Cym-

2

beline1 is included by Douce in a critical list of Shakespearian anachronisms; but as the period of time is 43 A.D. (when quoiting, putting, football, cockfighting, etc., were familiar pastimes of the Romans) Douce may be wrong and William Shakespeare right. The "base football player" in King Lear, and Cleopatra's invitation "to billiards" in Antony and Clecopatra, are unnoticed by the authority, so there is room for doubt.

3

The Dictionnaire Universel des Sciences says, "The game of billiards appears to be derived from the game of bowls. It was known in England in old time, and

1 Kymbeline, father of Togadamus and Caractacus, king of Britain. Arviragus (Adminius), called his youngest son, was banished to Rome 43 A.D. Camelodunum (Colchester) the capital of Britain (Ranking's Wars of Ancient Greece and Rome).

2 Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare.

3 Henry Irving dates the period of King Lear "at the departure of the Romans from Britain."

4 About 30 B.C.

was perhaps invented there." Strutt, writing of billiards, says, "I cannot help thinking it originated, from an ancient game played with small bowls upon the ground, and indeed that it was, when first instituted, the same game transferred from the ground to the table." The ancient pastime (see illustration) suggests a combination of billiards and bowls. The thought occurs ; might not the green lawn be the prototype of the green

Dame unknown

دروید

An Ancient Pastime. strutt

cloth? So if billiards is "derived from bowls," it is quite probable that the Romans introduced some such games into this country, as well as cockfighting;1 therefore the introduction of the game of bowls in Cymbeline may be quite appropriate.

Pall-Mall, from palla and meglia, a mallet, 2 was another game of bowls played with sticks; and gave the name to a well known London Street, also a wide road near it in St. James's Park, where the game used to be played. "A stroke with a pail-mail bettle upon a bowle,

1 Douce thinks Shakespeare's introduction of quail-fighting in Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Sc. 4, all right, as "he might suppose that Caesar's or Antony's quails, which he found in Plutarch, were trained to battle like game-cocks."

Quail combats were well known among the ancient Athenians. "Julius Pollux relates that a circle was made in which the birds were placed." "The Chinese have always been extremely fond of quail-fighting. See Mr. Bell's excellent relation of his travels in China."

2 This derivation is good enough, but pail (pailing or railing) and mall or mell, a wooden mallet used by masons, might be considered.

makes it fly from it," is an allusion to this game by Digby.

1

Mr. Nares believes that the place for playing was called the mall, and the stick employed, the pall-mall, and quotes, "If one had a paile-maile it were good to play in the alley; for it is of a reasonable good length, straight and even." The following extracts from P. Cunningham's Hand-book of London, 1850, will interest the reader. "A paille mall is a wooden hammer set to the end of a long staffe to strike a boule with, at which game noblemen and gentlemen in France doe play much." 2 "Among the exercises of France, I prefere none before the Paille-Maille, both because it is a gentlemanlike sport, not violent, and yields good occasion and opportunity of discourse as they walke from one marke to the other. I marvell among many more apish and foolish toys which we have brought out of France, that we have not brought this sport also into England.” 3 "Pale-Maille (Fr.), a game wherein a round bowle is with a mallet struck through a high arch of iron (standing at either end of the alley) which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed on, wins. This game was heretofore used in the long alley near St. James's and vulgarly called Pell-mell."4 Croquet is probably a modification of the game. Pepys in his

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