Dice-Shaking, Chess, and Polo Rank As Patriarchs, While Ping-Pong and
Basket-Ball May be Said to Be Only Fledgelings Just Out of the
Incubator—Football Was Taken to England by the Romans.
Few nations are able to boast of such a great variety of games as are
played in Great Britain and the United States. In many cases the
Anglo-Saxon has been responsible for the preservation of games which are
now almost unknown in the countries in which they had their origin. Some
of these forms of diversion are older than the Roman Empire, while
others, like ping-pong and basket-ball, are of recent invention.
=BASEBALL= holds undisputed sway as the American national game. It is
founded on the old English game of rounders, and for almost a century
it has been known in the Eastern States in various forms.
=BASKET-BALL= is unique, inasmuch as it was the invention of one man,
and was completed at a single sitting. In 1891, in the course of a
lecture at the Young Men’s Christian Association in Plainfield,
Massachusetts, the lecturer spoke of the mental processes of
invention, and used a game, with its limitations and necessities, as
an illustration. James Naismith, who was a member of the class, worked
out basket-ball that same night as an ideal game to meet the case. It
was presented the next day in the lecture-room and put in practise
with the aid of the members of the gymnasium. From there it spread to
other branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association and
subsequently to athletic clubs and the general public.
=BILLIARDS= is believed by some to have been brought from the East by
the Crusaders, while others claim an English origin for it and find it
allied to the game of bowls. Still others assert that the French
developed it from an ancient German game. It seems pretty certain that
the first person to give form and rule to the game was an artist,
named Henrique Devigne, who lived in the reign of Charles IX. One
writer sees in billiards the ancient game of paille-maille played on a
table instead of on the ground, and this is indeed a very reasonable
assumption.
=BOWLS=, or bowling, is one of the most popular and ancient of English
pastimes, its origin being traceable to the twelfth century. It was
held in such disfavor for years that laws were enacted against it and
it was an illegal pursuit. Alleys were built, however, as it could not
be played out-of-doors during the winter, and the game flourished in
spite of opposition. In the beginning of the eighteenth century greens
began to increase, while the alleys were rigorously and absolutely
suppressed. It soon became a royal game, and no gentleman’s place was
complete without a bowling-green.
=CHECKERS= is said by some to be a very old game, while others declare
it to be of comparatively modern origin. Whence it came is absolutely
unknown. The game is also called draughts, and there are many
varieties of it—Chinese, English, Polish, Spanish, Italian, and
Turkish. It is also found among the native tribes of the interior of
New Zealand.
=CHESS= always has been the subject of more dispute, so far as its
origin is concerned, than any other game. It is probably the most
ancient as well as the most intellectual of games, and it is played
all over the world. The belief which is most generally accepted is
that it came from the Hindoos, and the most conservative estimate
places its age at one thousand years. Some persons, however, claim an
age of from four to five thousand years for it. Its basis is the art
of war, and the Hindoo name for it, _chaturanga_, means the four
“angas” or members of an army which are given in Hindoo writings as
elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers.
=CRICKET= is the national game of Englishmen, and seems always to have
been played in Britain. The first mention of it is found in a
manuscript of the thirteenth century. The name comes from the Saxon
_cric_ or _cryc_, a crooked stick—an obvious reference to the bat with
which it is played. Wherever the English have colonized, the game is
played, and in many of the British possessions it has become popular
with the natives, notably in New Zealand.
=CROQUET= is said to have been derived from paille-maille, or mall,
which was played in Languedoc in the thirteenth century. Mall was very
popular in England at the time of the Stuarts. No other game has had
such fluctuations of fortune as croquet, as it sunk into oblivion by
the end of the eighteenth century, yet was revived during the middle
of the nineteenth, and assumed almost the popularity of a national
game.
=CURLING= has been popular in North Britain for the last three
centuries, and is regarded as a Scottish game. It is possible that
some of the Flemish merchants brought it into the country toward the
close of the sixteenth century, but however that may be, it owes its
development to the Scotch, and is now decidedly the national game of
Scotland.
=DICE= are said by some to have had their origin in occult sources,
but more reasonably they are ascribed to Psalmedes, of Greece, B.C.
1244. Those exhumed at Thebes are identical with those used to-day,
and the games played with them are the simplest and most widely known
games of chance in the world.
=FOOTBALL= was undoubtedly introduced into England by the Romans, and
is, therefore, older than the national game of cricket. Varieties of
it may be found in many parts of the world. It is known in the
Philippines and through the Polynesian Islands, among the Eskimos, the
Faroe Islands, and even by the Maoris of New Zealand. The Greeks also
played it.
=GOLF= is popularly supposed to have its origin In Scotland, but there
seems to be good reason for believing that it came from Holland. The
name itself is undoubtedly of German or Dutch extraction, and an
enactment of James I of England, bearing date 1618, refers to a
considerable importation of golf-balls from Holland, and at the same
time places a restriction upon this extravagant use, in a foreign
country, of the coin of the realm.
=LACROSSE= is the national ball-game of Canada. It came from the
aboriginal red men, who doubtless played it for many centuries before
the discovery of the New World. Different tribes played it in
different ways, and it was usually very rough. The name was given to
it by the French Canadians, who saw the resemblance between the curved
netted stick used in playing it and a bishop’s crozier or _crosse_.
=PING-PONG= is really table-tennis, and had its origin in that game.
Its immense popularity lasted only a brief space of time, and its
greatest vogue was in France and America.
=POKER= is probably a development of _il frusso_, an Italian game of
the fifteenth century. A similar game called _primiera_ was played in
Italy in the sixteenth century, and thence journeyed into Spain. In
France this became _ambigu_, and later appeared in England under the
name of brag. Poker is distinctly an American game, and seems to have
descended more directly from the game of brag than from any of the
others.
=POLO= is of Eastern origin, and has been a favorite pastime in
Persia, Tatary, and the frontiers of India from prehistoric times. The
name of the game varies with the district, and the rules are not the
same on minor points, though they are substantially alike on the main
issues. China and Japan also have a game closely resembling the
Persian sport.
=POOL AND PYRAMIDS= are both a form of billiards, and their origin
from the same source is apparent.
=SHUFFLEBOARD= probably comes from the same source as quoits, curling,
and bowling. It was immensely popular in England during the reign of
Henry VIII. Subsequently it was one of the games forbidden by law
because it turned the people from the practise of archery.
=TENNIS= is pronounced the oldest of all the existing ball-games. It
is impossible to give its origin, but it was played in Europe during
the Middle Ages, in the parks or ditches of the feudal castles. It was
at first the pastime of kings and nobles, but later it grew popular
with all classes. The French took it from the Italians and the English
from the French.
=WHIST= undoubtedly is derived from the old game of trumps, which has
a purely English lineage. There is no record of the origin of this
game nor of its development into ruff-and-honors, which was the parent
of whist. The earliest reference to it is believed to be in a sermon
of Latimer’s, about the year 1529. The name probably is derived from
the “hist” or “silence” which close attention to play demands of the
players.