ORIGIN OF POPULAR GAMES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8315, 19 December 1906, Page 3

ORIGIN OF POPULAR GAMES.

BILLIARDS. -Billiards is believed by some to .have been brought from the East by the Crusaders, while others claim an English origin for it and find it allied to the. game bowls. Still others assert that the French developed it from an ancient German game. : It seems pretty certain that the first person to give form and rule to the game was an artist, named Henrique Devigne, who liyed vf in the reign of Charles IX. , :< One .'..writer sees in billiards the ancient game of paillemaille played on a table instead of on the ground, and this is indeed a very reasonable assumption. BOWLS or bowling, is one of the most popular and ancient of pastimes, it origin being traceable to the twelfth century. It was held in such disfavour for years that laws were en- ■ acted against it and it was an illegal .pursuit. Alleys were built, however, as it could not be played out of doors during the winter, and the .game flourished in spite of opposition. In the beginning of the eighteenth century greens began to increase, while the alleys were rigorously and • absolutely suppressed. It soon be--came a royal game, and no gentle.man's place was complete without a bowling green. XHESS • always has been the subject of more dispute, so far as its origin is concerned, than any other game. It is .probably the most ancient as well as the most.intellectual of, games, and it is played all- oyer the world. The belief which .is most.generally accepted is that it came from the Hindoos, and the most conservative estimate places its age at one thousand years. "Some persons, • however, claim an age from.four to five thousand years for it. Its. basis is the' v art of war, and the Hindoo name for it, "chaturanga," means the four "angas" or members of an army which are given in Hindoo writings as elephants, horses, chariots, and foot soldiers.

CRICKET is the national game of Englishmen, . and seems always to have been played In Britain. The first mention of it is found in a manuscript* of the thirteenth century. The name comes from the Saxon •'eric" or "crye," a -crooked stick —an obvious reference to the bat with which it is played. "Whereverjthe English have colonised, the game is played, and in many of the British possessions, it has become popular with the natives. CROQUET is said to have been derived from paillemaille, or mall, which was .played in Languedoc in the thirteenth century. Mall was very popular in England at the time of the StuartsNo other game has had such fluctuations of fortune as croquet, as it sunk into oblivion by the end of the eighteenth/century, yet was revived during the middle of the nineteenth', and assumed almost the popularity of a national game. CURLING has been popular in Scotland for the last three centuries, and is regarded as a Scottish game. It is possible that some of the Flemish merchants brought it into the country toward the close of the sixteenth century, but however that may be, it owes its development to the Scotch, and is now decidedly the national game of Scotland. FOOTBALL was undoubtedly introduced into England by the Romans, and is, therefore, older than the national game of cricket. Varieties of it may be found in many parts of the world. It is known in the Philippines and through the Polynesian Islands, among the Eskimos, the Faroe Islands, and even by the Maoris of New Zealand. The" Greeks alsoplayed it.

GOLF is popularly supposed to have its 'origin in Scotland, but there seems to be good reason for believing that it came from Holland. The name itself is undoubtedly of German or Dutch extraction, and an enactment of James I. of England, bearing t;he date 1618, refers to a considerable importation of golf balls from Holland, and at the same time places a restriction upon this extravagant use, in a foreign country, of the coin, of the realm. WHIST undoubtedly is derived from/ the old game of trumps, which has purely English lineage. There is no record of the origin of this game nor of its development into ruff-and-honours, / which was the parent of whist. The earliest reference to it is believed to be in a sermon of Latimer's about the year 1529. The name probably is derived from the "hist" or "silence" which close attention to play demands of the players.—Scrapbook.