CRICKET AND ITS FORERUNNERS.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4943, 12 November 1884, Page 3

CRICKET AND ITS FORERUNNERS.

r Now, as far as we can ascertain, cricket seems to have been evolved out of stoolball and tip-cat, or, as it was called cat and dog. From stool-ball was borrowed the primitive wicket—a stool, or cricket— which {perhaps) gave its name to the pasttime- From stool-ball, too, we have the custom of tossing or bowling tbe ball to the striker. From cat and dog we borrow that part of the game which consists in running between two fixed points while the ball (at cat and dog the cat, or piece of wood) is being fielded or returned, by the other side. Cat and dog is in one sense a classical game. Bunyan tells us that he/was playing at it, and was just about to strike the cat, when he heard a supernatural voice bidding him forbear, I xemember reading this passage in child-. iood, and faucying that Bunyau was torturing poor puss, and that his heart was suddenly wrong by a sense of his own cruelty. But Bunyan was merely affected b*r a consciousness of the wickedness of primitive cricket. It geems that in some districts, cat and dog was less like knur and spell, or trap, bat and ball, than I have supposed. The cat was not hit up and knocked away by the player, as is tip cat, bat was thrown or bowled to him, as at cricket.—Home paper.