A Diabolical Version Of Bowls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 76, 6 December 1940, Page 5

A Diabolical Version Of Bowls

I ought not to leave these outdoor amusements without referring to the ancient and worshipful game of bowls. Its varieties, indoors and outdoors, are infinite. Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, defined a bow! cautiously as a round mass which is rolled along the ground. The Game we play in New Zealand was, I think, originally the Scottish variety. There was also, of course, an English one. The really fascinating type to me, however is the one still played in the North of England, in Lancashire particularly. It is called crown bowls, and from what I can learn of it, seems to be a truly diabolical game. Listeners will recall W. S. Gilbert’s lines about the man who was compelled to play billiards with a twisted cue, on a cloth untrue, with elliptical billiard balls. Crown bowls is like that. The green rises from all sides to a crown in the centre anything from six inches to a foot high, and, just to make things interesting, you may have an undulating surface, no two greens being alike in this. The woods have bias as usual, and the jack is a spheroid, that is to say, not quite a sphere. To crown it all, the game can be played in any direction, from corner to corner if you like, so that different games cross each others’ line. It is a game I should dearly like to see played; it must be the nearest thing to bedlam you could find in these days. I have never heard of it in New Zealand.-(Dr. K. J. Sheen, "Fashions, Ancient and Modern: Amusements," 4YA, November 19.)