THE GENSIS OF BOWLERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2142, 26 July 1907, Page 2

THE GENSIS OF BOWLERS.

Mr. J. Sheridan’s gifts of eloquence and humor are too wei; Wiiowu to descant upon. At the Bowling Club’s Social last evening his fertile imagination delighted ins audience when he essayed a lengendary account of the genesis of the Te llau Club. He sought to show that it was the first bowling institution in the world. He declared that it was not Tasman or Capt. Cook ivii > discovered New Zealand. It was a con of Erin and “a remarkable coincidence, gentlemen, he lauded on the very spot where the monument stands to-day.” Wliat did this stranger see? He 'witnessed tlie Chiefs “playing for their very lives: 1 in the Native bouts. ■ “Te Rau” clearly referred to these squabbles oi “rows.” The stronger men succeeded in wresting the mats or garments from tlie weaker, which were then laid on the ground, clearly showing how mats came to be used in. bowls. And the stranger witnessed the game of- bowls as the picturesque Maori played it. He saw the Natives select the fiat places in the kiangas. The Kiwi egg was tlio “Jack,” and the “howls” were tlie eggs of the moa. “Why are the present-day bowls not round?” queried the speaker, “simply because they are copied from the original form, the moa’c egg.” Feuds were settled, after a Korero on the “mat,” by a game of bowls. The warriors in their war paint literally “played for their lives.” “They had to, gentlemen,” the veracious historian assured his

convulsed hearers, “the losing team were put an the ‘pot,’ lienee the term we hear concerning defeated rinks—‘in the soup.’ ” It was as clear as daylight. And when a member of a Maori team disobeyed hip Chief’s directions how to play his egg the others belonging to the rink signified their disapproval by dipping the offender’s cranium in the hot, hot soup, thus bringing into use the term “a burnt head.” The narrati e was greeted with roars of laughter. Mr. Sheridan , sat down quite convinced that, ho had proved the Te Rau Club was the father of all Clubs. “ ‘Club.’ fellow bowlers, mark the word, does it not come from a barbarous ago?” It might be asked, he concluded, why the. Club had not been conspicuous until a few years ago. He explained this was merely a case, as the medical men would say. of “suspended animation.” There had merely been a break of a few centuries.