WHAT’S IN A NAME? - CROQUET
ROGER BRAY
Croquet journalist
Have you ever wondered how Croquet got its name? Look up any reference source for word origins and you will probably find that it is derived from crook or hook (e.g. a shepherd’s or crochet) and from Northern French or Brittany dialects. However, close inspection reveals this to be highly speculative, and a recent discovery offers an alternative explanation which gives an intriguing fresh insight into how the game probably developed before it burst on to the English social scene in the 1850s. THE ESTABLISHED VIEW The notion that Croquet is derived from crook dates to the 1870s. Most modern references rely on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entry for Croquet. The current online version is essentially the same as the 1893 first edition which in turn relied heavily on an 1872 book Notes on Croquet and Some Ancient Bat and Ball Games Related to It by R C A Prior. Richard Prior was one of the early pioneers of “scientific” croquet. An expert player, but very nervous, he never entered tournaments and is chiefly known for publishing a key letter in The Field which eventually led to the establishment of the All-England Croquet Club at Wimbledon. His Notes on Croquet is a long, rather rambling but scholarly essay attempting to trace the origins of the game, and the words used to describe it. About two-thirds of the book discusses possible precursors of Croquet, in particular Chicane and Pall-Mall. Chicane, the earlier of the two, appeared to be more like Hockey than Croquet, but it was still played in Brittany. Interest in Pall-Mall (literally “ball-mallet”) had been rekindled quite recently by the discovery of mallets and balls in a house in Pall Mall, London (the original royal site of the game before a new and improved ground was constructed in what is now The Mall). Little was known about Pall-Mall, but Prior had recently found a 1717 French book Le Jeu de Mail by Joseph Lauthier and translates a substantial part of it, including a version of the game “like Billiards” with a small arch at each end of a prepared smooth ground and a post in the middle. Although this made Pall-Mall a possible precursor of Croquet, Prior dismisses the idea on the grounds that he believed it had died out early in the eighteenth century. Having argued himself into a corner, Prior then discusses on linguistic grounds the derivation of the word croquet and
(Image above) The established view Pall-Mall “like billiards” played in the ducal palace parterre in Nancy, France, 1624 Players are grouped around a hoop at each end of the central avenue.
other terms used in the game. He argues that croquet means a little croc, or crook. “In Brittany to the present day they play hockey with crook-sticks, which they call croquets.” (Prior had noted that “crook” and “hook” are closely related linguistically – viz. “by hook or by crook” – so croquet and hockey had similar roots.) “This leaves no
Detail of the left end.
reasonable doubt that [Croquet], in some form or other, was brought from France, and that the mallet is an improvement upon a hockey stick.” I suggest that requires a leap of imagination on Prior’s part. Moreover, no evidence has since emerged for his theory. Prior is also inconsistent since his similar analysis for the word roquet leads him to conclude that it is derived from a form of ladies’ undergarment which he dismisses out of hand! Picking and choosing like that weakens his argument further. Detail of the right end.
Continued on page 7
www.croquetengland.org.uk | 6
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online