WHAT’S IN A NAME? (CONTINUED) THE IRISH DIMENSION
(Image below) Sudre’s Le Noble Jeu de Mail de la Ville de Montpellier, 1844
Even before Prior wrote his book there was evidence that Croquet was introduced into England from Ireland. Prior cites just one instance, that of a Miss Macnaghten, a young Anglo-Irish lady, who took the game to Isaac Spratt, the first commercial maker and retailer of croquet equipment, having “been lately introduced into Ireland, but which she had first seen on the continent in its primitive state - in the South of France, or in Italy, for he forgets which she said - and described as of the simplest and most rustic character.” There are now 17 known independent references to the game being played in Ireland in the three decades before 1858 when it really took off in this country. In 1965 A S C Ross, a professor of linguistics and keen tournament player, and R L Thomson, a specialist in Celtic languages, rejected Prior’s arguments on the grounds that his evidence was so thin. They proposed that the words croquet and roquet had Irish roots, namely that they are derived from the Irish word cluiche (“play”). (A summary of their findings was published in the Croquet Gazette, June 1966, page 2.) Their theory supposes that croquet emerged from the indigenous population. Alas, 16 of the 17 references to the early game in Ireland are from English or Anglo-Irish sources and are biased against such origins. Ross and Thomson could only find one reference to an obscure ball game in Irish folklore in which each player appears to have his own ball, like Croquet, and which was played on a cluiche-mag (“playing field”). So, as with Prior, their evidence is perilously thin. However, the Irish dimension does seem crucial, and it is very likely that other Anglo-Irish travellers beside the Macnaghtens had similarly introduced early forms of the game (some calling it Crooky or Crokey) into Ireland from the continent. The earliest recorded use of Croquet as the name of the game is dated 2 August 1853 when Spratt is registered as having published his Rules for the New Game of Croquet which he inserted into his croquet sets. (See Croquet Gazette, October 1973, page 3.) A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE The Victorians knew relatively little about the game of Pall- Mall. It was played by the aristocracy in the seventeenth century and thought to have long died out both here and abroad. The situation in France, however, was very different. Cities throughout the country had their mail, the name of the ground where le jeu de mail (“mallet game”) was played. It became a, if not the most, popular national outdoor pastime. Hence the compendium Académie des Jeux , the
recognised authority on games in France, included Lauthier’s 1717 description of the game in editions published throughout the eighteenth century. Le jeu de mail was particularly popular in the Languedoc and Provence. In Montpellier, Mail was played by a cross-section of its population and became highly organised. It even established a reputation across Europe. Significantly for us, they developed the rules of play. Lauthier’s text gave a basic description of the game but did not deal with problematic situations. In 1772 Monsieur J Sudre published Le Noble Jeu de Mail de la Ville de Montpellier with the express intention of filling this gap. Later (virtually identical) editions of the work appeared in 1822 and 1844. At first aristocrats played in chateau parterres or specially designed grounds. When the game was taken up by the more general populace, players used either dedicated mails (probably based on parterres), cobbled streets or open fields. Playing in public spaces sometimes caused friction. In the 1830s, local newspapers reported lawcourt proceedings
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