JULY.
"Swift o'er the mead with lightning speed
The bounding ball flies on;
And hark! the cries of victory rise
For the gallant team that's won."
Cricket--Club-ball--Trap-ball--Golf--Pall-mall--Tennis--
Rush-bearing.
At this time of the year all the cricket-clubs in town and village
are very busy, and matches are being played everywhere. It may not
therefore be inappropriate if I tell you in this chapter of the
history of that game which has become so universally popular
wherever our countrymen live. On the plains of India, in Australia
(as some of our English cricketers have learnt to their cost), in
Egypt, wherever Englishmen go, there cricket finds a home and a
hearty welcome. But it is not nearly so ancient a game as others
which I have already mentioned, although it had some fairly old
parents, simple and humble-minded folk, who would have been greatly
astonished to see the extraordinary development of their precocious
offspring.
Kent and Sussex were the ancestral homes of cricket, which is thus
described by an old writer--"A game most usual in Kent, with a
cricket-ball bowled and struck with two cricket-bats between two
wickets. The name is derived from the Saxon word _cryc_, baculus, a
bat or staff; which also signifies fulcimentum, a support or prop,
whence a cricket or little stool to sit upon. Cricket play among the
Saxons was also called _stef-plege_ (staff-play)."
I fear that our old writer must have made a great mistake if he
imagined that the Saxons ever played cricket, and I believe that the
word was not known before the sixteenth century. In the records of
Guildford we find that a dispute arose about the enclosure of a
piece of land in the time of Elizabeth; and in the suit that arose
one John Derrick stated in his evidence that he knew the place well
"for fifty years or more, and that when he was a scholar in the free
school at Guildford he and several of his companions did run and
play there at cricket and other plays." Also in Cotgrave's French
Dictionary, published in 1611, the word _crosse_ is translated "a
cricket-staff, or the crooked-staff wherewith boys play at cricket."
In the eighteenth century allusions to the game become more
frequent, although it was still a boy's game. It had its poet, who
sang--
"Hail, cricket, glorious, manly, British game,
First of all sports, be first alike in fame."
It had its calumniators, who said that it "propagated a spirit of
idleness" in bad times, when people ought to work and not play, and
that it encouraged gambling. But the game began to prosper, and
several noted men, poets and illustrious statesmen, recall the
pleasurable memories of their prowess with the bat and ball. In a
book of songs called _Pills to purge Melancholy_, published in 1719,
we find the verse--
"He was the prettiest fellow
At football or at cricket:
At hunting chase or nimble race
How featly he could prick it."
In the early part of the eighteenth century the game was in a very
rudimentary condition, very different from the scientific pastime it
has since become. There were only two wickets, a foot high and two
feet apart, with one long bail at the top. Between the wickets there
was a hole large enough to contain the ball, and when the batsman
made a run, he had to place the end of his bat in this hole before
the wicket-keeper could place the ball there, otherwise he would be
"run out."
The bat, too, was a curved, crooked arrangement very different from
our present weapon. The Hambledon Club, in Hampshire, which has
produced some famous players, seems to have been mainly instrumental
in reforming and improving the game. Its members introduced a limit
to the width of the bat, viz., four and a quarter inches--the
standard still in force--in order to prevent players, such as a hero
from Reigate, bringing bats as wide as the wicket. In 1775 they
wisely introduced a middle stump, as they found the best balls
harmlessly flying between the wide wickets. It was feared lest this
alteration would shorten the game too much, but it does not seem to
have had that effect, as in an All England match against the
Hambledon Club, two years later, one Aylward scored 167 runs, and
stayed in two whole days. England owes much to the old Club at
Hambledon for the improvements which it wrought in the game, which
has become our great national pastime.
Miss Mitford, in her charming book, _Our Village_, describes the
rivalry which existed between the village elevens at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, and gives a sketch of a match between two
Berkshire village teams, which brought about some very happy results
of a romantic nature. She tells us, too, of the comments of the
rustics on the "new-fashioned" style of bowling which one of the
team had introduced from London, which did not at all commend itself
to them, but effectually took their wickets. When that celebrated
company of cricketers, dressed in frock-coats and tall hats, whose
portraits adorn many a pavilion, competed for the honour of All
England, they were quite ignorant of "round-arm" bowling, which is,
of course, an invention of modern times. Only "lobs," or
"under-hands," were the order of the day. It has been stated that we
are indebted to the ladies for the important discovery of the modern
style of delivering the ball. The story may be legendary, but I have
read somewhere that the elder Lillywhite used to practise cricket
all through the winter, and that his daughters used to bowl to him.
During the bitter cold of a winter's day they wore their shawls, and
found it more convenient to bowl with extended arms than in the old
method. Their balls so delivered used to puzzle their father, and
often take his wicket; so he began to imitate them, and introduced
his new method into matches, and thus the age of round-arm bowling
was inaugurated. I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, and only
tell it as it was told to me.[12] At any rate Lillywhite was the
father of modern bowling, which would have startled and considerably
puzzled the veteran cricketers in the early part of the present
century.
The proper parent of cricket seems to have been club-ball, which is
a very old game, and of which there is a picture in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford, dated 1344 A.D. It represents a female throwing a
ball to a man who is in the act of raising his bat to strike it.
Behind the woman, at a little distance, appear several other figures
of men and women waiting attentively to catch or stop the ball when
hit by the batsman. There is a still more ancient picture of two
club-ball players, representing the batsman holding the ball also
and preparing to hit it, while the other player holds his hands in
readiness to catch the ball. He has the appearance of a very careful
fielder. Here we have the rudimentary idea of cricket; but how they
scored their game, what rules they had, we cannot determine.
Stool-ball claims also to be an ancestor of cricket, and consists in
one player defending a stool with his hand from being hit by a ball
bowled by another player. Here is a simple form of the modern game,
the stool being used as a wicket, and the hand for a bat.
Trap-ball is a much older game than cricket, and can be traced to
the beginning of the fourteenth century. The modern game differs
little from that which the old pictures describe, except in the
shape of the trap which holds the ball. But the most ancient of all
games of this nature is golf, or goff (as it used to be spelt),
which was played with a crooked club or staff, sometimes called a
bandy. Scotsmen are very fond of this game, which has lately
migrated into England and found many admirers. It was probably
introduced into Scotland from Holland, and was a popular pastime as
early as 1457. In spite of proclamations encouraging archery, and
forbidding golf, it continued to flourish; it has a long list of
royal patrons; and the Stuart monarchs seem to have been as
enthusiastic over the game as all true golfers ought to be. Poets
have sung the praises of golf, and the glory of the heroes who drove
their balls along St. Andrew's Links, or those of East Neuk. The
object of the game is to drive the ball into certain holes in the
fewest number of strokes. James II. was an expert golfer, and had
only one rival, an Edinburgh shoemaker, named Paterson.
[Illustration: PALL-MALL.]
If you have visited London you will probably have walked along the
street called Pall Mall, which name is derived from an old game
fashionable in the reign of Charles II. The merry monarch and his
courtiers frequently amused themselves with this game, which
somewhat resembled golf, and consisted in driving a ball by means of
a mallet through an iron hoop suspended from the ground in the
fewest blows. The game was played in St. James's Park, where the
street which bears its name now runs.
Tennis also has a history. It commenced its career as hand-ball, the
ball being driven backwards and forwards with the palm of the hand.
Then the players used gloves, and afterwards bound cords round their
hands to make the ball rebound more forcibly. Here we have the
primitive idea of a racket. France seems to have been the original
home of tennis, which in the thirteenth century was played in
unenclosed spaces; but in the fourteenth it migrated to the towns,
and walls enclosed the motions of the ball. In Paris alone there
were said to be eighteen hundred tennis-courts. In the sixteenth
century there were several covered tennis-courts in England, and
some of our English monarchs were very devoted to the game. Henry
VII. used to play tennis, and there is a record of his having lost
twelvepence at tennis, and threepence for the loss of balls. Henry
VIII. was also very fond of the game, and lost much money at wagers
with certain Frenchmen; but, like a sensible man, "when he perceived
their craft he eschewed their company, and let them go." He built
the famous court at Hampton, which still remains. Charles II. also
played tennis. The old game is very different from the modern
lawn-tennis which is now so popular: it was always the game of the
select few, and not of the many, like its precocious offspring; and
there are only thirty-one tennis-courts in England at the present
day. The court attached to the palace of the French King Louis XVI.
at Versailles was the scene of some very exciting meetings in the
early days of the French Revolution in 1789.
[Illustration: PALL-MALL.]
[Illustration: TENNIS.]
There were some other forms of ball-play, such as balloon-ball,
stow-ball, &c.; but of these it is hardly needful for me to speak,
as they are only varieties of those games which I have already
described. The history of football has been narrated in a preceding
chapter. You will be able to trace from the descriptions of these
old sports the ancestors of our noble game of cricket, and wonder at
the extraordinary development of so scientific a game from such rude
and simple beginnings.
The floors of the houses and churches of old England consisted
simply of the hard, dry earth, which the people covered with rushes;
and once a year there was a great ceremony called "Rush-bearing,"
when the inhabitants of each village or town went in procession to
the church to strew the floor with newly-cut rushes. The company
went to a neighbouring marsh and cut the rushes, binding them in
long bundles, and decorating them with ribands and flowers. Then a
procession was formed, every one bearing a bundle of rushes; and
with music, drums, and ringing of bells they marched to the church,
and strewed the floor with their honoured burdens. Long after the
rushes ceased to be used in churches the ceremony was continued, and
I have witnessed a rush-bearing procession such as I have described.
There was a rush-cart with a large pile of decorated rush-sheaves,
and some characters from the May-day games were introduced. A queen
sat under a canopy of rushes, a few morris-dancers performed their
antics, and a jester amused the spectators with his quaint sayings.
A village feast, followed by dancing round a May-pole, generally
formed the conclusion of the day's festivities. In 1884 this
pleasant custom was revived at Grasmere in the Lake district, when
the children of the village carried out a "rush-bearing" after the
manner of their forefathers, and the village green again resounded
with songs of joy.
I fear that our ancestors were not always very cleanly people; they
seldom washed their floors, and therefore they were obliged to adopt
some device to hide their uncleanliness. The old rushes were not
taken away before the new ones were brought in; hence the lowest
layer became filthy, and one writer attributes the frequent
pestilences which often broke out to the dirtiness of their floors
and the masses of filthy rushes lying upon them. Perhaps some of the
wise folks in Lancashire discovered this, for we find the following
entry in the account books of Kirkham Church, 1631--"Paid for
carrying the rushes out of the Church in the sickness time, 5._s_.
0_d_." Straw was used in winter: it would seem very strange to us to
have our floors covered with straw, like a stable!
In this matter of cleanliness we have certainly improved upon the
habits of our forefathers: dirty cottages are the exception, and not
the rule, as they were in the days of "good Queen Bess"; and the
absence of those terrible plagues which used to devastate our land
in former times is due in a great measure to the improved
cleanliness and more careful regard for sanitation by the people of
England.