OF ANCIENT ORIGIN

Taranaki Daily News, 13 March 1935, Page 9

OF ANCIENT ORIGIN

BOWLING THROUGH THE AGES.

AMUSING “BRIEF HISTORY.”

Speaking at the official opening of the New Plymouth Bowling Club’s jubilee celebrations on Saturday the Hon. S. G. Smith gave rather an amusing “brief history” of the game of bowls, which he stated had been supplied to him by the Hon. W. Perry specially for the occasion. The game of bowls was a very ancient one, Mr. Perry had said, so ancient that its origin was lost in the mists of antiquity. It was a curious thing that the temptation to seize upon a nicely rounded missile and aim it quickly or slowly at some object moveable or stationary, was an almost irrestible impulse in man, in whom markmanship in any form was a primitive instinct. There was good reason to suppose that the game existed, in a form not very far removed from the present, as l°ug ago as the thirteenth century. In 1295, in the reign of Edward the Third, Parliament assumed something like its present form, and one of the first iniquitous things Parliament did—long before it thought of high exchange and income tax—was to prescribe the game of bowls as “Ludos inhonestus et minus utiles aut valentes,” which might be roughly translated as, “A dishonest, useless and lazy game/’ But despite Parliament the game still flourished. In later years during -the reign of Henry the Eighth, there existed certain skilled practitioners who were prone to lie in wait for the “mugs” of those days in the bowling alleys which existed, and by shai-p practice deprived the innocent of their wealtfa. So much so that

in Henry’s reign such alleys were prohibited under diverse pains and penalties. But despite all this the game persisted in flourishing. In Savanhah, in the State of Georgia, a bowling green existed in 1739—nearly 200 years ago, and Thackeray in “The Virginians” refers to_ bowling greens being in existence in the State of Virginia in 1754—m0x - -a jSwa ®

before the American Revolution. “ la Australia the oldest bowling club was formed in 1864—over 70 years ago. Coming nearer home, it was established almost beyond doubt that the’ancient • game was played by the Maoris of long . ago. They played on the beaches, with stone bowls,, shaped very much’. lt#» cheeses. Some of these were present in the Auckland Museum to-day.