THE DECLINE OF MARBLES

Shannon News, 24 July 1925, Page 4

THE DECLINE OF MARBLES

A JUDGE ON SPOBT. RUGBY MUDDY: CRICKET BORING. At a recent prize giving in Brockley (England), Lord Darling had the courage to address a company of schoolboys on the subject of sport. The headmaster having declared that "the improving and ameliorating power of Rugby fotball had made itself distinctly felt" in his school, Lord Darling confessed that football was, in his opinion. "muddy," and that cricket "seemed to bore those who played it" (says an article in "The Times"). In face of such an attack upon its gods, the audience courteously laughed. Thus encouraged, Lord Darling rashly proceeded to make constructive suggestions. "The only sport which he ever cared much about was fox hunting and stag hunting," and, although he recognised that Brockley was not "exactly what might be called a good hunting neighbourhood," he thought that the London County Council might usefully keep a pack of beagles for the school. This was so obviously not seriously intended that the tolerant audience laughed again, a little puzzled, perhaps, to know what purpose was concealed by , these o-'aborate preparations. Then Lord Darling declared himsrlf. Marbles was his game—a game, he believed, "somewhat despised at public schools." Having made this admission, he proceeded, however, neither to defend nor to praise. Perhaps, at the last moment, his heart failed him; perhaps, with the eye of the headmaster upon him, he felt that he could not plead "the improving and ameliorating power" of marbles, and so threw up his brief. For whatever reason, he straightway abandoned his promising but dangerous subject, and a moment later was assuring his audience, amid their cheers, that "the schools of England were the best schools in the world."

That, no doubt,'is a very safe and patriotic opinion. A man who has dared to say that football is "muddy" is entitled to add almost anything, however dull, which will please those who think it "improving and ameliorating." We wish, nevertheless, that Lord Darling had been indiscreet enough to continue in the now abominable heresy of marbles. It is so ancient a heresy that once it was orthodox. Defoe celebrated it, Mr. Pickwisk asked Master Bardell, 'whether he had won any 'alley tors' or 'commoneys' lately," and Rogers had pleasure in the memory of how. On yon grey stone that fronts the chancel-door, Worn smooth by busy feet, now seen no more, Each eve we shot the marble through the ring. Some irresistible attraction inherent in it has conquered all the nations of the world. It spiang from Nature herself, and did not need to be invented. To flick one stone at another stone, or to roll it into a series of holes, or to aim it at some narrow aperture was. to any child who sat down upon the ground in Egypt, Rome, or England, a natural use of stones.

To trim the stones, to grind, grade, and polish them, was not a long step forward from making an advantageous selection at the roadside or from picking out, in Roman fashion, the rounded nuts most suitable to the game. Thus the art progressed, accumulating tradition, competing with authority on the steps of the Bodleian, and creating in every village, and almost in every 3treet its own rules and its own technical language.

Late in the 19th century it still strongly survived, even in the nurseries of those who would some day go to public schools and learn to despise it, and to-day a chalk mark on a deserted pavement or a little group tucked away among the cottages of some obscure village tells that the pastime is not altogether dead. But the air of apology with which Lord Darling referred to it is evidence that it is dying. Not much longer shall the language have a place for poppos and marididdles, for whinnies and glassies, and for fine blood-alleys. Old ladies must put away their solitaire boards, and their nephews, if they are to get on in the world, renouncing the puerile diversions of Hogo and Holy Bang, must devote themselves to the muddier business of improvement and amelioration.