A POPULAR PASTIME

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 25, 22 June 1907, Page 35

A POPULAR PASTIME

THE GAME OF BOWLS

“ We’ll play at bow ls.”—Shakespeare.

Today (Satinday), weather permitting, play commences on the bowling greens, public and private, of Newcastle and the North country, and thus opens a season .which bids fair to be a busy one for local bowlers, us many important contests have to be fought out by the members of the various elubs which are pitted one against another. The principal of these, perhaps, as far as the public greens are concerned, is the struggle for the Cowen Cup, which is again to be competed for by senior public green clubs. This year two new clubs, the Bly th and the Heaton Victoria, have entered for this prize. Then ■wc have the Sinclair Cup. for junior teams, the Durham Cup for those of the County Palatine, and various other trophies. In connection with local private clubs, the principal items are the contest for the International Championship, which is to take place in Newcastle in July this year, and the Alfred Bell Cup, to be competed for at Berwick in June by members of the Portland, West End, Gosfortli, Alnwick, and Berwick elubs. Altogether, the coining season cannot fail to be an interesting one to all lovers of the old English game, whether actual players or onlookers, and for their benefit it is our purpose now to give a glance back at its past history, a glanee which may impart some information perhaps not generally known even among the most ardent devotee's of the sport. The game of bowls is not only one of the oldest and most popular of English pastimes, but also the most picturesque of our outdoor games. Happily, its recent popular revival in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies has been unassociated with gambling, a stain from which its earlier career was not entirely clear, as we shall see. With the exception of archery, it is the oldest outdoor game in the British Isles, although there are enthusiastic writers on football who tell us that the soldiers of Julius Caesar introduced that game into Britain at the time of the Roman invasion. But we have no further proof of this than their bare assertion, so, leaving football on one side, we turn back to the history of the game of bowls and strive to gain a peep at its earlier days. At the latter end of the twelfth cen-

tury, a certain William Eitzstephens, author of “ A Survey of London,” states, in that work,'that during the summer holidays youths took exercise, by means amongst other pastimes, of a game ealle.l •* iactu lapidum ” (throwing of stones). It is supposed that by this he means the game of bowls, for. in early days, stone spheres are known to have been used instead of the wooden ones afterwards introduced and still in use. It has been a matter of much speculation whether bowling was first practised in the open air or on the turf, or under cover in alleys. The writer mentioned above expressly states that the citizens of London went outside the city walls into the suburbs to witness this game. Had it been played in covered alleys they need not have troubled to do this, for the alleys were within the walls, in the midst of the population; therefore it is reasonable to suppose that the game alluded to was the open-air game, played on the turf. Indeed, there is a bowling green still in existence which seems, if tradition be true, to bear out this supposition, for it dates back very nearly to the time of Eitzstephens. This is the green of the Southampton Town Bowling Club, which is supposed to be the oldest- extant. It was laid down in the time of Edward the First (1272 to 1307). and, according to tradition, has been rolled over ard bowl ed over ever since, notwithstanding that several of Edward’s successors tried to suppress the game.

Tn the reign of King Edward TIT. the game of “throwing of stones” (bowls) is mentioned in the ’"Close Roll” as one of the “games alike dishonourable, useless and unprofitable,” but the leason

for thus classing it was that the King ’and his advisers were concerned lest the practice of -archery, so much more important to the military spirit of the nation, should suffer neglect through the interest taken in the less warlike sport. The same reason led to the passing of an Act, of Parliament in the reign of Richard 11, forbidding servants, artificers, and labourers to play at the game. This statute was confirmed by another Act passed in the reign of Henry IV., and in that of Edward IV. it appears that bowling still remained in disrepute, for the ‘"half-bowl,” as the game was then called, is included in the enumeiution of “the many new imagined p’ays” which were followed by all classes of the population, to their own impoverishment,” whereby it would appear at the time money was played for or staked by others on the players. It was charged against the players that they “by their own ungracious procurement and encouraging do induce others into such plays until they are utterly undone and impoverished in their goods.” It was even stated in the preamble of the Act that murders, robberies and felonies were the consequences attending such sports.

Accordingly, it was enacted that anyone playing at half-bowl after the following Easter, or the occupier or governor of any “house, tenement, garden, or other place” where such games are permitted, should lie punished by fine or imprisonment.' Here it is probable that both the indoor and outdoor games are meant, seeing,tJia t '“hoifsb” and “garden” are mentioned, and it may be.concluded that by this time bowling alleys had sprung into’existence in towns. This then may be considered) as the first mention of the game as practised under cover, though, it is equally dear that indoor alleys had not entirely superseded outdoor greens. Hitherto the game bad been mentioned under the term of “half-bowl”; in the reign of Henry VIII. the previous statutes against unlawful games were confirmed, and the word ‘"bowls” for the first time occur, the. game being still deemed an illegal pursuit for the lower orders, as tending to divert them from more manly exercises. Of the popularity of the game, amongst the higher classes -at least, in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth we have the authority of Shakespeare who was probably an expert player himself. Biassed bowls were known in his time, and it is interesting to note how often he refers to bowling in his plays. There is no doubt he carries the game back to times anil into . countries which never knew it, but then it was a habit of the greatest of English poets to n.’.ike use of the customs of his own time and country

to give life and seem’ng to -quite other periods and clinics. He was cue who made full use of his poetical license: otherwise he would not in the “Winter’s Tale” have given a coast line to Bohemia where coast line there is none, nor have pictured Cleopatra playing billiards long before such a game was thought of.

We must take it. therefore, that when in his plays he mentions bowls, he is describing the game or alluding to it merely as it existed in his own time. Full of interest to a'd bowlers and to many others besides are the pictures of old-time bowl ing greens the great magician’s wand conjures up for us. In the Duke of York’s garden at Langley, the poet introduces the unhappy Queen of Richard 11. and her ladies. Says one of the latter. “Madam, we’ll play at bowls?” But the Queen objects, saying, “’Twill make me think the worl I is full of rubs, and that mv fortune runs against the bias.”

In the “Taming of the Shrew’’ Petruchio says: “Thus the bowl should run, and not unluckily against the. bins. ” in “Coriolanus,” Mencnius says: “Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground. I have tumbled past the. throw.” In “Cymbeline,” there is reference to playing for money, for Cloten says: “I'll go see this Italian: what I have lost to-dav at bowls I’ll win to-night of him.” Again, in “Love’s Labour Lost,” one of the characters is styled “a marvellous good neighbour and a very good bowler.’’ Bacon, who has been set up as a rival to Shakespeare in the authorship of the plays, in his famous essay on “Studies,’ recommends the game of bowls as a cure for stone in the bladder, while everybody is familiar with the story of Sir Francis Drake who was playing lowD on Plymouth Hoe when the news reached him that the Spanish Armada had been sighted on Lizard Point. “There is no hurry,” remarked he. coolly. “We will play the game out. and then go and beat the Spaniards,” Truly a noteworthy and historic game of bowls was t iiat!

Under the Stuarts the game was very popular, but it used to be played ’for very heavy stakes. Charles 1., who was a bowling enthusiast, once lost £‘11)00 at it in a single day. He was playing oh Lord Spencer’s green at Al thorp Ayhen Cornett Jbyce arrived at Hohn by to arrest him. During . his detention at Cavasham Castle. Charles used to play on a green -behind an oldfashioned inn Hear Goring Heath. The landlord, on the sign-board of his hostelry, thus commemorated his Majesty's visit. Stop, traveller, stop.’ In yonder peaceful glade Ills favourite game the royal martyr playHere stripped of honours, freedom, children, rank, Drank from the bowl, and bowled for what he drank; Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown; And changed his guinea ere he hist his crown. There are several allusions to the game of bowls in Sir Walter Scott’s novels. In the “Fortunes of Nigel*’ a light is described as taking place on a bowling green. The commit terminated, the company present “put the field to its proper use as a bowling ground, and it soon resounded with all the terms or the game, as ‘Run. run rub, rub—hold bias, you infernal trundling timber!’” thus making good the saying, that “three things are thrown away on a bowling

green—namely; time, money,- and ortlis.” In “Peveril of the Prak,” Dr. Duinmerar says: “Man H, while in this wlv of tears, like an uninstructed bowler, so to speak, who thinks to attain the jack by delivering his bowl straight forward upon it, being ignorant that there* is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will make it, in all probability, swerve away and lose the cast.” At the lieginning of the eighteenth century howling greens began to increase rapidly in number, and no country gentleman’s scat was considered complete* without one. These, of course, were* private greens. The first regular howling club of which then* exists any trace is the Willow-Bank club, founded in Glasgow at the commencement of the nineteenth century. The following poem, by \\ illian Stroud, in one of the ILirlein Mani: scripts preserved in the British Museum, expresses happily enough, though quaint ly, the turns and chances of the game oi bowls: —

A PARALLEL BETWIXT BOWLING AND PREFERMENT. Preferment, like a game of boules. To feed our hope hath divers play: Heere quick it runs, there smooth it ronles. The betters make and show the way On upper ground, so great allies Doc many cast on their desire: Some are upthrust and forced to rise When those are st opt that would aspl Some, whose heate ami zeal exceed Thrive well by rubbs that curb their haste, And some that languish in their speed. Are cherished by some favour s blast. Some rest in other's rutting out The fame by whom themselves arc made. Some fetch a compass far about. And set retjy the inarkc invade. Some get by knocks and so advance Their fortune by a boisterous alm. Ami some who have the sweetest chance Their enemies hit and win the game, The fairest easts are those that owe No thanks to fortune’s giddy sway. Such honest men good bowlers are Whose own true blns cutts the way.