Volume Ii Part 42 (1/2)

A game (undescribed) recorded by the Rev. S. D. Headlam, as played by Hoxton School children.-_Church Reformer_, 1894.

Stik-n Snael (Stick and Snell)

Game of cat.-Elworthy, _West Somerset Words_. The short stick, pointed at both ends, is called a snell.

Stocks

A schoolboys' game. Two boys pick a side, and there is one den only, and they toss to see which side shall keep it. The side which wins the toss then goes out, and when two boys have got a good distance off they cry ”Stocks.” The boys who keep the den run after them to catch them. When one is caught his capturer counts ten while he holds him (in a more primitive but less refined state, spat over his head) and cries _Stocks_. This prisoner is taken into the den. If they are all caught the other side turns out. But if one of the outer side can manage to run through the den and cry ”Stocks,” all the prisoners are relieved, and can go out again.-Easther's _Almondbury Glossary_. See ”Stacks.”

Stones

A circle of stones is formed according to the number of players, generally five or seven each side. One of the out party stands in the centre of the circle, and lobs at the different stones in rotation; each hit a player gives all his side must change stations, in some places going round to the left and in others to the right. The stones are defended by the hand or a stick, according as a ball or stick is lobbed.

All the players are out if the stone is. .h.i.t, or the ball or stick caught, or one of the players is. .h.i.t while running. In different counties or places these games are more or less modified.-Dublin, _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. 264-265.

Mr. Kinahan, who describes this game, adds a very instructive note, which is worth quoting:-

”These games I have seen played over half a century ago, with a lob-stick, but of later years with a ball, long before a cricket club existed, in Trinity College, Dublin, and when the game was quite unknown in a great part of Ireland. At the same time, they may have been introduced by some of the earlier settlers, and afterwards degenerated into the games mentioned above; but I would be inclined to suspect that the Irish are the primitive games, they having since been improved into cricket. At the present day these games nearly everywhere are succeeded by cricket, but often of a very primitive form, the wickets being stones set on end, or a pillar of stones; while the ball is often wooden, and very rudely formed.”

Stool-ball

The first mention of this game is by Smyth in his _Berkeley Ma.n.u.scripts_. In the reign of Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, with an extraordinary number of attendants and mult.i.tudes of country people, and ”whom my neighbours parallel to Bartholomew faire in London, came to Wotton, and thence to Michaelwood Lodge, castinge down part of the pales, which like a little park then enclosed the Lodge (for the gates were too narrow to let in his Trayne), and thence went to Wotton Hill, where hee plaid a match at stoball.”-_Gloucesters.h.i.+re County Folk-lore_, p. 26.

The earliest description of the game, however, is by Aubrey. He says ”it is peculiar to North Wilts, North Gloucesters.h.i.+re, and a little part of Somerset near Bath. They smite a ball, stuffed very hard with quills and covered with soale leather, with a staffe, commonly made of withy, about three feet and a half long. Colerne down is the place so famous and so frequented for s...o...b..ll playing. The turfe is very fine and the rock (freestone) is within an inch and a halfe of the surface which gives the ball so quick a rebound. A s...o...b..ll ball is of about four inches diameter and as hard as a stone. I do not heare that this game is used anywhere in England but in this part of Wilts.h.i.+re and Gloucesters.h.i.+re adjoining.” (Aubrey's _Natural History of Wilts.h.i.+re_, p. 117; _Collections for North Wilts_, p. 77). It is no doubt the same game as Stool-ball, which is alluded to by Herrick in 1648 (_Hesperides_), and in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1677 (see Halliwell's _Dictionary_).

D'Urfey's _Don Quixote_, written in 1694, alludes to it as follows:-

”Down in a vale, on a summer's day, All the lads and la.s.ses met to be merry; A match for kisses at stool-ball to play, And for cakes and ale, and cider and perry.”

_Chorus;_

”Come all, great, small, short, tall- Away to stool-ball.”

It is also alluded to in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1740:

”Now milkmaids pails are deckt with flowers, And men begin to drink in bowers, The mackarels come up in shoals, To fill the mouths of hungry souls; Sweet sillabubs, and lip-lov'd tansey, For William is prepared by Nancy.

Much time is wasted now away, At pigeon-holes, and nine-pin play, Whilst hob-nail d.i.c.k, and simpring Frances, Trip it away in country dances; At _stool-ball_ and at barley-break, Wherewith they harmless pastime make.”

It is described by Strutt in _Sports and Pastimes_, p. 103, as a variety of game more commonly known as ”goff” or ”bandy ball,” the paganica of the Romans, who also stuffed their b.a.l.l.s with feathers. According to Dr.

Johnson, the b.a.l.l.s are driven from stool to stool, hence the name.

In spite of Aubrey's opinion as to the limited range of this game, it appears to have been pretty generally played. Thus, Roberts' _Cambrian Antiquities_ says, ”Stool-ball, resembling cricket, except that no bats are used and that a stool was subst.i.tuted for the wicket, was in my memory also a favourite game on holydays, but it is now seldom or ever played. It generally began on Easter Eve” (p. 123). It was also an old Suss.e.x game. Mr. Parish's account is that it was ”similar in many respects to cricket, played by females. It has lately been revived in East Suss.e.x by the establishment of stool-ball clubs in many villages.

The elevens go long distances to play their matches; they practise regularly and frequently, display such perfection of fielding and wicket-keeping as would put most amateur cricketers to shame. The rules are printed and implicitly obeyed.”-Parish's _Dictionary of Suss.e.x Dialect_.

Miss Edith Mendham says of the Suss.e.x game, it is supposed to derive its name from being played by milkmaids when they returned from milking.

Their stools were (I think) used as wickets, and the rules were as follows:-