THE GENEALOGY OF PLAYING CARDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18946, 17 December 1929, Page 13

THE GENEALOGY OF PLAYING CARDS .

Symbols And Names

(Written for the 66 Star ” by

D. E. WALLER.)

Three packs of cards were made foi each man, woman and child in America last year. Furthermore, ten times as many cards are manufactured in the world to-day as were turned out twenty years ago. The familiar story is that playing cards were invented by Jacquemin Gringeouneur to amuse Charles VI., the insane King of France, in 1392. But that is pure legend, for they are mentioned in the Annals of Provence as early as 1361, and John 1., of Castile, issued an edict against them in 1387. A manuscript by a Swiss monk, Johannes, which is in the British Museum, says that the game of cards was introduced into Switzerland in 1377. Germany and Italy also lay claim to fourteenth century dates for their first “pasteboards.”

China had cards about 1100 A.D., with dots for symbols. They were called “Che-pae,” or paper tickets. Thirty cards were in a pack, three suits of nine cards each, and three independent cards superior to the rest. One of these superior cards was called “the white flower.” Poetic terms were used for the others—“the nine myriads of strings of beads,” “the nine units of cakes,” “the nine units of chains,” and so on. The Chinese cards were rectangular. Early India used circular cards. The Hindus usually made them of canvas, stiffly varnished. There were ninety-six cards in a pack. As with our own, the numerals ranged from one to ten, but there were eight suits, divided into four “superior” and four “inferior.” Each of the eight suits had a colour of its own, green, blue, red, yellow, black, brown, white or fawn. Hindu cards had no queen, but there was a king, and he had his prime minister.

The Present-day Cards. Our own familiar pack of fifty-two cards descends from a larger aggregation. Venice, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, played with a pack of seventy-eight cards. Of these fiftysix bore numerals and the figures o 1 the king, queen, chevalier and valet There were four suits, with four of the Court cards in each. The numerals were from one to ten. The twenty-two other cards in the pack were emblematic; they were held to have survived from remote times, and to have been used for divination. These were of highest value in the game and were called “trumps.” In those days such a pack of cards was called a pack of “tarots,” because they were “tarote,” or marked with diagonal crossings on the back. Gradually the emblematic cards were eliminated, as well as one of the Court

cards in each suit, leaving the pack with forty-two. Then came variety in the symbols used. The Italian, French and Spanish suits comprised swords, cups, batons and money, while the old English and German cards showed hearts, bells, acorns and leaves.

On the present-day playing card the spade derives its form from the symbol of the German leaf, and its name from the Italian “spada,” which was the name given in Italy to the suit of swords. The club takes its shape from the German acorn, and its name from the translation of the Italian “bastoni.” The German heart remains, though at times it was a chalice or a bell. The sword symbol, through French adaptation, because the “pique” or lancehead, then the diamond. Such is the mixed-up genealogy of the cards of our time.

Unusual Card Packs. Engravers of the sixteenth century designed and executed playing cards of great artistic merit, and those of Jost Amman, engraved on wood in Nuremberg in 1588, are supreme examples of the kind. That city was long the chief centre of card manufacture. In 1452 John Capistran preached there for three hours against the card habit, and wrought up public feeling to such an extent that a huge bonfire of cards, backgammon boards and dice resulted. Bologna, too, once witnessed such a scene.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was customary to satirise political, historical and social events on playing cards by means of cartoons. The French Revolution offered a particularly fine opportunity to the republican draftsmen to show their contempt for kings and queens. One American pack of cards is a rare item for the collector. It commemorates the war with Mexico in 1848, and in the place of kings appear the Generals of the military campaigns. On the aces are shown well-known country places of the time, including Washington’s headquarters at Newburgh. The engagement between the Monitor and Merrimac in 1863 was also recorded on a pack of cards. Bridge enthusiasts may be saddened to know that the original of their game, whist, was long looked upon as only a pastime for servants and the “lower orders” generally. By 1739 it had taken hold on the “upper crust” to such an extent that even children gave whist parties, greatly to the horror of conservative persons. (Anglo-American N.S. Copyright.)