A PACK OF CARDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20323, 3 February 1928, Page 4

A PACK OF CARDS.

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE. A house without a pack of cards is almost as rare nowadays as a pack of cards without the Government’s receipt, which for centuries has been the ace of spades, on which the maker’s name must appear. As nearly every country claims to hare invented playing cards, we shall probably be as near the truth as it is oossible to get if we accept the Puritan’s statement that they are the work of Satan himself (writes Ursula Grosvenor in the Man Chester Guardian). One thing cnly seems certain—Satan must have started his invention in the East, whence it was brought to Europe, probably by wandering gipsita or returning Crusaders. These first cards —or tarocchi, as they were named — were about, as unlike our modern packs as it is possible to imagine. The queen, not conforming to Oriental ideas of woman’s lack of importance, did not exist. She owes her position to the gallantry of France, according to that nation, who claims the honour of being the first to place her in a pack. Seventy-eight of these cards were needed to make a pack, 28 of which were trumps, each bearing a different emblematical design. A mad king of France is undoubtedly responsible for their reduction to the presentday number and design, as apparently his courtiers, while seeking to amuse him, decided that so great a number was too much for his mentality, and reduced them accordingly. They discarded the swords, cups, sticks, and money, the symbols of the Orient, and substituted the hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. Four emblematic coat, or court, cards were chosen to represent those with which we are so familiar to-day. The quaint king of Card Land owes his curious dress, which seems merely lines and dots nowadays, to the ermine trimmed garments covered with heraldic devices of Henry’s VIII’s time. The queen scores over the king in one respect, for she represents a real and very beautiful person. No matter which suit she represents, she holds up the emblem of the Rose of York, a centuries old reminder that by her marriage with Henry VII she put an end to a war. Why the knaves of hearts- and spades spend their lives in profile whilst their brothers gaily show their full faces is as impossible to discover with certainty as is the reason for their place of honour next to the queen. Possibly as jack, or jack-a-napes, they are the descendants of that absurd person whose tricks and wit earned him the position of king’s fool or knave. As such he would certainly be closely attached to the royal suite, and quite likely at first he was known as knight. Playing cards have not always been the smooth, beautifully finished product that modern bridge demands. The first European ones were “ rough ” tc say the least of it, being merely stencilled from crude carvings. Any and every kind of material seems to have been used in their manufacture, the Indians specialising in deerskin, which, after they had painted it red and blue, became almost imperishable. Gold, silver, ivory, wood, tortoiseshell, and canvas have frequently been used, and one sympathises with the players who had to shuffle .tiles 1 Coconut shells must have been difficult iu handle, too, yet the Malays were very proud of those they designed with a steel

“ pencil.” Neat little packs of English cards went over with the American colonists, hut stormy weather at sea con vinced them that card-playing must be wrong so they cast them all overboard and made some new ones out of copas leaves as soon as they landed! Bridge players who find it difficult to remember what has “ gone ” would have been still more unhappy in playing ,;ny of those early card games, such as ombre, when the eblematical cards could only be understood if on r had a glossary to hand. The ide~ i instructive caVds with information • n every conceivable subject was e great idea,. Only no one would be instr 'cted, and so they, too, # were quickly replaced by others, including a good many satrical ones, especially during the gambling wave that swept over England as .well as the Continent.