BOWLING

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1929, Page 7

BOWLING

TIME-HONOURED PASTIME j s ' AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. A CHEQUERED HISTORY. (By “Toucher.”) You may talk of .your cricket and its wonderful wicket, !. Of football, with marvellous, goals; But what in the whole realm of sport can compare With the time-honoured pastime of bowls ? : From the day of Armada, when good old Drake played .... His game .on-the -famed “Plymouth . - .-Hoe.” . Right-downi.tlu-ough the ages, on his-tory’s-zpages,-• • ‘Our * game shines out in full glow. * . We:meet green;.puff the.sweM nicotine, .■< ... ; . e Some '/‘‘rollers,’ some “bowlers," some ‘‘pitchers.” ' Whilst.some do most lovely cuddle the -.jack,, ■■ - -■ And some are magnificent “ditchers. But whatever our skill, let our motto be still ,:... .. • -. Health, .pleasure and friendship, not .. fame. . ... .- ; Our< hearts will be lighter, and life rail the brighter, , Im playing the old English game. •So now. all : you bowlers, get your whitesall .prepared, ■? . To take part ,in the;, game we all -play.. For*friendship it mellows;-makes the best of- good fellows, And drives care and-trouble away. ,/.,# * /:• ■■ * .. The !official“ opening of. the/various bowling. . greens, - throughout . Taranaki takes place this .month,; but how many Of ' the bowlers will. give a. thought to the men who introduced the game and those who' kept the bowl rolling through the long years of 1 repression T The old game, indeed, has a chequered history. With the exception of archery, bowling the oldest of all outdoor games, and it was because it competed with archery that bowls came into disfavour. King after king frowned;on the game, fearing that men would give time to bpyvls instead of archery.- Archery was for long England’s first line of defence, so m 1388 bowls came to be prohibited as unlawful. Tweiity.-one years ,later Henry IV “got «the breeze up” over bowls, and enacted that “he that playeth at unlawful games shall be six day-imprisoned.” But still the jolly bowlers bowled along until in.. 1477 a measure was passed decreeing. that players of forbidden games were liable to two years’, gaol and a fine of £10 —no mean amount in those faroff days. ■ The statutes of. Henry VlH.’s time refer to bowls as a game devised by “many subtil, inventative and crafty persons,” .and, imposed, a fine of 40s. for each day a player played bowls. Rut while King Henry compelled magistrates and mayors of towns to imprison every bowler and bowling green keeper they could catch, he ordered that a bowling green be put down at Whitehall Palace for himself. In spite of this the attempts at repression remained on the Statute Book for three centuries. ’ ' THE FIRST GREEN OPENED. The first bowling green was opened in 1885. Unfortunately all the early greens and alleys were near taverns and hotels, and as gamblers and rakes attended, matches for stakes became a regular feature. The stigma attaching to the alley included the greens, and an Innocent pastime was for years an instrument of pernicious gambling. Driven from the pothouse, where it was abused, bowling reappeared on the, lawns of the privileged class. For many years fashion 'had ceased to smile upon the game, but in the 18th century and earlier 1 day no fashionable resort was complete without its' bowling green. M. de Grammont tells us how at Tunbridge Wells, in the days of Charles 11., all the visitors were accustomed, at the approach of evening, “to assemble on the bowling green, where in the open air they choose a turf softer and smoother than the finest carpet in the world.” He notes, too, that bowls, which in France was then the pastime of mechanics and servants only, was quite the contrary in England, “where it is the exercise of gentlemen, and requires both art and. address,” and describes with admiration the greens, the little square grass plots, where the turf is almost as smooth and level as the cloth of a billiard table. He adds that the company was accustomed to “play deep,” and that the spectators made what bets they pleased. . . . .

BOWLS GREW LIKE TOPSY. It is hard to believe that the bowls was “invented" in England; or indeed anywhere else. The game just ■grew like Topsy. Bowls is the ball-game in its simplest, form, and wherever sea or river have provided round stones or the forest round holes the game must have “just growed." Invention in the mechanical sense was there none. The instinct to roll what is round, as the infant rolls a woollen ball, is primitive in dogs, cats and men. So bowls remains the game that “anyone can play” and few can play well. It has escaped elaboration for this reason, it was easy enough and hard enough and improvements were unnecessary. A representation, preserved from the 14th century; of “three persons engaged in the pastime of bowling,” could, with a few touches, pass for a picture of a modern game. It depicts a crucial moment at one head. One player, whose bowl lies nearest the jack—“kissing the mistress,” Shakespeare calls it—stretches a vainly deprecating hand against an oncoming bowl that threatens to dislodge him. Another, who had just bowled the moving bowl, watches its progress at tiptoe and contorted in an agony of hope and anguish—a “fluker’s” attitude, to be found on any bowling green and by most billiard tables. A third bowler, hand on knee,- calmly prepares destruction for both their hopes. But many early allusions to “bowls” are somewhat ambiguous, for the name was also given to the old pastime of ninepins, more vulgarly known as skittles. The context sometimes shows whether this game or that proper to the bowling green is intended, but in not a few cases the meaning is uncertain. It is perhaps tolerably safe to assume that whenever bowling alleys are referred to, the game • played -therein was ninepins,

or some variant thereof. When, for Instance, on June 5, 1601, Mr. Samuel Pepys went home with Sir R. Slingsby “to bowles in his alley,” the three gentlenlen probably passed the afternoon at skittles. . CEREMONIAL AT SOUTHAMPTON. ■■ The men of Southampton with much quaint ceremonial use to-day their an-, cient bowling , green; and at Plymouth the bowlers meet still upon the Hoe, secure in the knowledge that oui' inconoclastie historians have failed as yet to rob them of the story, of Drake and Hawkins being interrupted at their game of bowls there by the approach of the Spanish Armada. . An American paper, New York Life, with that irreverence often shown by the American to old and cherished British tradition has been scoffingly treating that historic incident. It say: “Probably the most famous sporting event in English history,, with the exception, of the winning of the Battle of Waterloo on the playing, fields of Eton in 1815, was a game, of bowls that took place at Portsmouth in the reign of Good Queen Bess. ..Sir, Francis. Drake and a few.cronies from the fleet were indulging in a close,; hard-fought ganie on the Devonshire turf when news came that the Spanish Armada had b.cexi. sighted •not 20 miles a way. As Spain was ut war with England at the time, ‘Jt seemed. hardly that these ’were just tourist ships bringing, a lot of Spanish students and instructors for a summer in Shakespeare’s country. “I guess we got to be going,’ murmured Sir Richard Groville, who .was I'o points behind at the game. ‘Liko fun we- are going!’ retorted Sir Francis, eyeing the,, .green quizzically. ‘We're, going to finish this game if takes all summer!’ Arid a cheer went up from his .men, -who had been-betting heavily bn the outcome. ‘Honestly, we got to go!’ ..protested Greville, tugging his arm. ‘And by the way, Francis, how about not kicking your ball towards the jack? That’s not. cricket.’ .‘Well, we’re not playing cricket, are we?’ was the quick retort which has gone down into history. And to the': accompaniment of deep booms from the Spanish galleons Drake proceeded to run up arscore of- 238 before the tea interval.'” „ A SCOTTISH RENASCENCE. To the Scots we owe the salvation of bcWls. The stripped it of its undesirable surrounding and made a beautiful . game of it, second to xione in its scientific and strategical possibilities, •and surpassing all others in its promotion- of good fellowship. The Scottish revival arrived in the early Victorian -period, after the repeal of the Corn Laws, when the thrifty Scots escaped from the nightmare of the old protection and secured a surplus of bawbees for the ends of social enjoyment. The Erasmus of the revival of the thirteenth Earl of'Eglinton, a Maecenas in his time, admirei - and defender of Robert Burns, author of the historical Eglinton tournament, and owner of the Flying Dutchman, one of the great racehorses of the last century. His Eglinton Cup is still played- for annualfy by rinks selected from the -massed and opposing bowlers of Ayrshire and Glasgow. The new game, as it was shaped by Scottish hands, spread into England, and gradually to the various parts of the. British Empire, until to-day on thousands of greens, the English and the Colonial show themselves as enthusiastic players as the Scots, and more severe sticklers for rules and modes., , AS PLAYED IN FRANCE. The game of bowls, a dignified and historical pastime in the British Empire, takes the form of glorified marbles in France. It must, of course, be remembered that it is only of recent years that the French attitude to sport generally has begun to approach the English spirit. The average Frenchman probably regards the passion for sport which is, to a greater or lesser degree, inherent in English prototype, as a curious fetish. There is, however, a growing appreciation in France to-day of the sterling worth of competitive sport in. the production of useful specimens of mankind. /To get back to the game of bowls, however, the French game differs considerably from our own. To begin with, it can be played on any sort of ground. We can imagine that most New Zealand players would jib at having to deliver a -wood on a gravel path,, as is permitted by the rules of the Union National des Federations Boulistes! Metal “woods” are permitted under French rules, and having regard to the rule mentioned above perhaps it is just as well. The game is in other respects approximately the same as our own except that under the rules of “tir” and “pointage” the jack is placed in the centre of a series of circles, which involves a pretty system of scoring. Ten clubs are affiliated to the union, whoso head office is in Lyons. These clubs are located in centres as far apart as Paris; Macon, Nice and Grennoble.

BOWLING SEASON OPENS. EARLY START AT TARIKI. The first bowling club in the central division to formally open its green for the season was- Tariki. The function took place yesterday afternoon, and although the weather could have been warmer, it was by no means, unpleasant. For the past few weeks assiduous attention had been given the green, and visitors found the playing surprisingly true for so early in the season. Prior to the usual opening match (president v. vice-president), the president (Mr. H. Rumball)- extended a hearty welcome to visitors and congratulated the greenwarden on the condition of the rinks. As is the invariable custom at Tariki, the ladies provided an excellent afternoon tea, which served as a pleasant interlude in the enjoyable game that followed the opening.