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| Stool at bottom right |
At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play
For sugar-cakes and wine :
Or for a tansy let us pay,
The loss, or thine, or mine.
If thou, my dear, a winner be
At trundling of the ball,
The wager thou shalt have, and me,
And my misfortunes all.
But if, my sweetest, I shall get,
Then I desire but this :
That likewise I may pay the bet
And for all a kiss.
Where a tansy is a kind of cake. I don't know if any arrangement like Herrick's had been made between Andrew Strauss and Darren Sammy, but I did notice that the game seems now to be commonly referred to as cricket, and that nobody seems to be utterly sure why. The OED has a veritable essay on the subject, but the best theory seems to be that a cricket is a stool. You see, there's a kind of little foot-stool called a cricket-stool which is recorded from 1559 (Item 2 old chaires‥. Item one litill crekett stole.), and therefore if stool-ball were played with a cricket stool it would become cricket. And so, in 1575 you have the first record of the noble game:
Ther are made likewyse, many-kynde of Balles, Tut-staues or Kricket-staues, Rackets, and Dyce, for that the foolish People, shoulde waste or spende their tyme ther-with, in Foolishnes.
This is utterly true, but I like foolishness. I should also mention that the reason I was at the cricket in the first place was the release of a lovely book called Third Man In Havana that you should go and buy instantly etc etc if you have any interest in stool-ball.
Four slips and tonsure
Posts
You need to extend your research to Douglas Adams's Life, the Universe and Everything, which would inform you both why it is called cricket and, in passing, why we are shunned by every other civilized planet in the galaxy.
ReplyDeletestoolball features frequently in memoirs of WW2 German prison camps eg The Colditz Story
ReplyDeletecan't say from memory whether it's the same game
Played it a lot in East Sussex where villages pubs etc. all had teams. It's the only place I've come across adults playing it, though I gather it's more widely played in schools
ReplyDeleteYou see, there's a kind of little foot-stool called a cricket-stool which is recorded from 1559 (Item 2 old stag parties chaires‥. Item one litill crekett stole.), and therefore if stool-ball were played with a cricket stool it would become cricket. And so, in 1575 you have the first record of the noble game:
ReplyDelete