_HISTORICAL SPORTING SERIES NO. I._
Foot-Ball:
Its History for Five Centuries
BY
MONTAGUE SHEARMAN
AND
JAMES E. VINCENT.
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_LONDON:
Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, E.C._
_Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Hamilton, Adams & Co._
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FIELD & TUER,
THE LEADENHALL PRESS, E.C.
T 4,192.
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Preface.
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The Authors, who welcome this opportunity of addressing their readers
through the conventional channel of a preface, have not written
without an object. That object has not been to teach the art of
football, which art can only be attained by practice. It has been to
collect the scattered and fragmentary knowledge which surrounds the
history of an ancient pastime. In the pursuit of this object they have
performed the pleasant duty of exploring many literary storehouses,
and have not seldom been compelled to wander far out of the beaten
track. They will have attained their object if they can pass on to
their readers one-tenth of the delight which resulted to themselves
from their wanderings. There also resulted a theory, which was not
adopted without anxious argument, that the games of football now in
vogue owe their origin almost entirely to the public schools; and that
in the public schools rules were the consequence of circumstances and
environment. At the same time football has a history which has been
faithfully followed.
In addition to the thanks, which we cannot adequately express, to
ancient authors, we owe a debt of gratitude to Walter Rye, Esq., than
whom none is better versed in the antiquities of sport, for valuable
advice as to sources of information.
M. SHEARMAN.
J. E. VINCENT.
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Contents.
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CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE ORIGIN OF FOOTBALL 1
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF FOOTBALL BEFORE THE PURITAN ERA 8
CHAPTER III.
HISTORY OF FOOTBALL FROM THE PURITAN ERA
UNTIL THE PRESENT CENTURY 33
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORY OF FOOTBALL IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 47
CONCLUSION.
THE MODERN REVIVAL OF FOOTBALL 67
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CHAPTER I.
_The Origin of Football._
When a national taste or a national trait is under consideration, sound
criticism often falls from a foreign observer. At the present day an
American novelist, whose subtle analysis of character is charming
English readers, has pronounced his opinion that an Englishman is
only to be understood and appreciated when he is seen out of doors
in a flannel suit; while a French critic goes further, and assigns a
narrower sphere to British ability, by making the observation that an
Englishman is only perfectly happy when he has a ball to play with.
Certain it is, that, good as they are in any branch of sport, it is
in games in which a ball of any kind is used that the members of the
English race are the most enthusiastic and proficient players. There
is another feature, too, in such games which renders them peculiarly
interesting; they have all an ancient and an honourable history. So
far back indeed does the history of the different kinds of ball-play
reach, that the investigation of their origin, and for the present in
particular of the earliest records of the game of football, can hardly
fail to produce interesting fruit.
The most learned historian of sports and pastimes, Joseph Strutt,
indulges in an elaborate antiquarian inquiry into the origin of the
ball, having recourse to the most ancient of the classics for his
authorities. Hand-ball, he says, is, “if Homer may be accredited,
coeval at least with the destruction of Troy. Herodotus attributes the
invention of the ball to the Lydians; succeeding writers have affirmed
that a female of distinction named Anagalla, a native of Corcyra,
was the first who made a ball for the purposes of pastime, which
she presented to Nausica (_sic_), the daughter of Alcinous, King of
Phæacia, and at the same time taught her how to use it.” To emphasize
his authority, the antiquary quotes three lines from Pope’s Odyssey
(bk. v.).
“O’er the green mead the sporting virgins play,
Their shining veils unbound, along the skies,
Tost and retost, the ball incessant flies.”
The same author is much, and it would seem somewhat unnecessarily,
distressed at the fact that the writer of a 14th century manuscript
preserved in Trinity College, Oxford, and the Venerable Bede are not
in harmony as to the early capacities of the athletic saint, Cuthbert.
The former says of him that “he pleyde atte balle with the children
that his fellowes were,” while the latter merely makes mention of his
general excellence at games involving great muscular exertion. The
plain fact of the matter is, that the origin of the ball is one of
those matters which must of necessity be lost in antiquity. Nature
herself supplies an endless variety of balls of all sizes, suitable
for throwing from hand to hand, and the act of playing with them is
instinctive. The apple and the orange are, so to speak, objects which
nature supplies, not only as objects of food, but also as materials for
pastime; clay, too, and snow, are of so plastic a nature that the hands
even of children naturally mould them into a spherical form and hurl
them to and fro in sport.
Before, however, an attempt be made to show how the game of football
became developed as a specific sport, it is without doubt the duty of
sober historians first to chronicle the legends which have attached
themselves to the foundation of the game. Firstly, it is said that in
ancient times it was the custom to kick a large stone from parish to
parish, both in Scotland and in England, for the purpose of marking
boundaries and asserting rights of way; and that in this practice,
which was indulged in by large bodies of the parishioners, each of
whom desired to give his kick when he got the opportunity, we are to
find the origin of football. Certain it is, at any rate, that the
practice of kicking a leather football over a path on Whit-Monday, for
the purpose of exercising a right of way, endured into the present
century in the Isle of Purbeck in Dorsetshire, a ball being annually
presented to the workmen of certain quarries for that purpose. But
the origin of the practice, both in that locality and in some other
parts of the country where it is known to have been followed, is
shrouded in antiquity; and there is little evidence to show that this
practice caused the rise of football, instead of having arisen at
a time when the game itself was well known. This latter view seems
the most probable. The second legend of the origin of the game is
one of a gruesome character, and far more suitable to be chronicled
in connection with the legendary or mythical stage of history. The
ancient Teutons, it is averred, did not scalp the bodies of their
slaughtered enemies (as did the Choctaws), nor did they mutilate them
(as do the Bashi-bazouks), but in grim sport cut off their heads and
kicked them about, after the fashion of the Baron in the Ingoldsby
legend of Sheppey, who, after he had donned the famous boots, first
killed the holy father with a magnificent “punt,” and afterwards
encompassed his own ruin by an ill-timed “place-kick” at the skull of
Grey Dolphin. But even granting that our savage progenitors indulged in
the amiable pastime which we have described (and after all it is far
from improbable), we can still comfort ourselves by feeling certain
that football had no such horrible origin; for the game of head-kicking
may have been magnificent--may have been superb (to quote the famous
_mot_), but it certainly was not football. It is curious, however, that
amongst the traditions of the city of Chester, which is one of the
oldest homes of the game, where it was played by all the inhabitants of
the town on the Roodee, the head of a Dane is still stated to have been
the original ball used in the game. Perhaps it is best to give these
two legends, as in duty bound, and then to pass on to matters which
are of unquestioned historical accuracy. Indeed, were it not for these
legends, it would seem obvious that the foot-ball, as distinguished
from the hand-ball, was the product of civilization and invention. Such
indeed it seems to have been in fact, although it must be confessed
that the subjoined explanation of the origin of the foot-ball is in
part hypothetical and based upon _à priori_ grounds. It is probable
that the first foot-ball was the Roman _follis_, or inflated bladder,
of which Martial speaks when he advises boys and old men alike to
play it. But the _follis_ was, primarily at least, a hand-ball; and a
bladder was probably used first for that purpose, for the simple reason
that it was able, on account of its lightness, to be struck into the
air with the hand without pain, and with ease. At some uncertain but
momentous date, an impetuous player must, after missing the ball with
his hand, have kicked out petulantly with his sandalled foot, and so
unconsciously made the first experiment in the art of drop-kicking, or
punting. Swiftly and strongly the ball flew, farther than it could be
cast by the strongest arm or smitten by the lustiest hand; and this
must inevitably have been the first step to the later development of
the game played with the _follis_, when it was kicked with the foot or
struck with the hand at discretion and convenience.
Be this as it may, it is probable that the Romans, along with their
other habits and fashions, imported the various games which they
played with the _follis_ or with other kinds of ball, into England.
One of these balls, used by the Romans, and by them derived from the
Greeks, was the _harpastum_, the game played with which was that the
players of one side should try to carry the ball over a line defended
by the other side, a pastime which bears no small resemblance to the
game of “hurling,” which we shall describe later. But whether football
was really introduced into Britain by the Romans, or whether it be
an indigenous product of the country, yet, with the exception of the
one doubtful reference to an anonymous manuscript to which allusion
has formerly been made, we do not find any mention of the game in the
annals of our Anglo-Saxon progenitors; and it is not until the 13th
century that we find genuine historical authority on the subject.
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