OLD, OLD GAMES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 583, 8 February 1929, Page 6

OLD, OLD GAMES

Do you like to play tennis? It may interest you to know that this popular game has been known and played for many hundreds of years. When tennis was first played, it consisted of knocking the ball back and forth with the hands and was called hand-tennis or “pauine” by the early Normans, with whom it was a favourite game. Later it came to be played with racquets and was such a popular game with royalty that all the ancient castles had their tennis courts. The game of cricket is England’s most popular pastime. This game can be traced back to about the year 1250. In those days it was played with a crooked stick which the players called a “crick,” this word doubtless coming from the same beginning as crook and crooked. Thus the game came to be called cricket. Blind Mail’s Buff was a vers 7 popular game for winter evenings in those long ago days. Then it was called Hood Man Blind. It is mentioned in one ot the oldest English manuscripts known. Its strange name came from the manner in which the player who was “it” was blinded, by pulling his hood down over his eyes. The hood was a part of a person’s wearing apparel in those very early days and when not being worn was allowed to hang down the back from the ueck. It was a far simpler wav to blind than tying a handkercliiel around a person’s eyes, to slip that loose hood up and down over the face; and besides, a handkerchief not have been used very well, for handkerchiefs were unknown among the common people long ago 1