III.
Although Spain, and the adjacent nations through her, received chess from Arabia, the game not only existed but was wide-spread in the north of Europe at a period so early (and under a slight modification) that we are led to believe they derived it from some other source. Indeed, nothing would seem more likely than that some of the many tribes who were constantly migrating thither from Asia would carry it with them. Major C. F. de Jaenish, a Russian writer, is of opinion that Russia received it direct from the east through her ancient conquerors, the Moguls; and in proof of this, he notes two pieces changed in the chess of southern Europe, but retained in their original form in Russia. These are, first, the commander of the army, or biser, called in Persia ferz; and second, the elephant, called in Russia, Slone. But it doubtless existed in Russia long before the Moguls held sway, which was not until the thirteenth century; and long before that time there are records of it as an amusement among the Northmen of the neighboring kingdoms. Besides this, in the ninth century the descendants of Ruric the Norman, who then ruled Russia, had extended their conquests to the Black Sea, and, in the language of the old historian, "greatly infested its waters;" one of them had even married the sister of the Greek emperor. It is, therefore, more than probable that through some of these channels chess was introduced into the northern part of Europe at a very early date.
It may have been carried thither by those maritime marauders, called the sea-kings, even before it was heard of in Spain. The first movement of the Arabians against Spain is generally fixed in the year seven hundred and ten; when Taric-ben-Zeyed, with some galleys disguised as merchantmen, cruised along the coasts of Andalusia and Lusitania, to see what temptation the Christian land offered to the followers of the prophet. That his survey was satisfactory, we know by what followed. But long before this, the Northmen in their ships had made themselves famous and feared. An Icelandic chronicle tells us "they were on every sea, and more numerous on water than on land." In the eighth and ninth centuries, they were to be found not only repeatedly ravaging England, Scotland, and Ireland, but sailing up the Somme, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, and the Rhone; they had pillaged and burnt Paris, Amiens, Orleans, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, and Tours; and laid waste Provence and Dauphiny. More than once they landed in Spain; and they had coasted the Mediterranean, to the terror of Greece and Italy. These expeditions were always predatory; and they may not only have acquired in their Mediterranean voyages some hints of the game of chess, but chess-men and chess-boards may have made a trifle in the booty with which they always returned laden to their northern homes.
Mons. Mallet, the antiquarian, in seeking to account for the great quantity of foreign coin found about that time in the northern kingdoms, thinks it less probable that it was the honest gains of commerce than "relics of the plunder collected by these ravagers." In like manner, perhaps, they appropriated chess. In whatever way obtained, it must have been to them particularly attractive; for what was it but that for which they lived—battle and victory? Nothing could have been better adapted, in the long nights of their northern winters, both to divert them from that restlessness which seems to have possessed the whole of their existence not spent in the tumults of war and the chase, or in preparations for them—and also as a pastime at their frequent and magnificent feasts; occasions upon which they infused into it their own fierce and vindictive spirit, for we know that their chess games ended very frequently not in the check-mate of the king, but in breaking each other's heads with the chess-board. Some such instances on record are tragic and revolting. Similar manners extended along the middle ages. An old writer thus explains the feud which existed between Charlemagne and Ogier the Dane:
"At one of the festivals at the court of Charlemagne, the emperor's son Charles, and Bauduin, son of Ogier, went to play together. They took a chess-board and sat down to play for pastime. They arranged their chess-men on the board. The emperor's son first moved his pawn, and young Bauduin moved his aufin, (bishop.) Then Charles thought to press him very hard, and he moves his knight upon the other aufin. The one moves forward and the other backward so long that Bauduin said mate to him in the corner. Then the young prince was furious at his defeat, and not only assailed the son of Ogier with the most insulting language, but seized the chess-board and dealt him such a violent blow on his forehead that he split his head and scattered his brains on the floor!"
King John of England, in his youth, at the court of his father Henry II., played sometimes with Fulk Fitz Warine, a lad like himself, and as often it ended in a quarrel. A curious old history of the Fitz Warines gives the following story:
"Young Fulk was bred at the court of King Henry, and was much beloved by all his sons except John; for he used often to quarrel with John. It happened that John and Fulk were sitting all alone in a chamber playing at chess. John took the chess-board and hit Fulk a great blow. Fulk felt hurt, raised his foot and struck John so that his head went against the wall, and he grew weak and faint. Fulk was in consternation, but he was glad they were alone. Then he rubbed John's ears, and he recovered and went to the king his father to complain."
His majesty bestowed upon him little sympathy, for he punished him for being quarrelsome. Considering that John began the affray, this might pass for justice; but he did not forget the matter when he came to the throne. Fulk was the famous outlaw.
In many old manuscripts incidental mention is made of chess as a favorite amusement for heroes. When Regner Lodbrog, the warrior-poet, was killed, the messenger who carried the news to his sons found two of them—Sigued (snake-eye) and Hurtish (the bold)—playing chess; the third one, Biorn, was mending his lance. Regner Lodbrog died about the close of the eighth century.
Snorro Sturleson relates that, in 1028, Canute, King of Denmark, rode to Roskild to visit Earl Ulft, the husband of his sister. The king was very dull and scarcely spoke, and to enliven him, Earl Ulft proposed a game of chess. So they sat down to it, and played until Ulft took a knight; this the king would not allow.
"Are you a coward?" he exclaimed.
"You did not call me coward when I shielded you in battle," replied the earl; but for this reminder he lost his head.
An early metrical romance tells us that when Witikind, king of the pagan Saxons, received information that Charlemagne was marching on his dominions, the messenger found him in his palace at Tremoigne, playing chess with Escorsaus de Lutise; and his queen, Sebile, who also understood the game, was looking on. Witikind was so indignant at the news that he "seized the chess-board and smashed it to pieces, and his face grew as red as a cherry."
There is a droll story told of a kindred spirit of more modern date. A choleric Scottish nobleman, a former Earl of Stair, frequently played with a friend of his, Colonel Stewart. Not contented with bestowing very expressive invectives on the colonel's occasional superior play, he sometimes, when goaded by a check-mate, flung at his head any object possible within reach; so at last the colonel, for prudence' sake, when about to make his last move, always rose hastily and retreating behind some door, called out, "Check-mate, my lord!"
While the general manners of an age are gathered from its grave historians, we can learn them more in detail from its romances. In all the early romances left to us, wherever chess is mentioned—and it is constantly introduced as a pastime of knights, princes, and courtly dames—it is almost always an occasion or implement of some fierce dispute.
In the romance of Quatre fils d'Aymon, the agents of Regnault go to arrest Richard, Duke of Normandy, and find him playing chess. The result is thus quaintly told in an old English version, printed by Copeland.
"When Duke Richarde saw these sergeauntes hed him by the arm, he helde in his hande a lady of ivery, wherewith he would have given mate to Younet. Then he withdrew his arm, and gave to one of the sergeauntes such a stroke with it into the forehead that he made him tumble over and over at his feete; and then he tooke a rooke and smote another withal upon his head, so that he all to-brost it to the brayne."
In the romance of Parise la Duchesse, her young son, brought up at the court of Hungary, becomes an object of jealousy to some of the nobles, and four of them conspire to murder him. In order to accomplish their object with safety to themselves, they invite him to play chess with them in a retired cellar. "Hughes," said they, "will you come with us to play at chess? For you can teach us chess and dice; for certainly you know the games better than we do." Hughes seemed suspicious of their advances, and it was not until they promised him to avoid all disputes that he accepted their invitation. He began to play with the son of Duke Granier; but while he in kindness was about showing them in what manner to move, they drew their knives upon him, and outrageously insulted him. He killed the foremost of them with a blow of his fist, and seizing the chess-board for a weapon, for he was unarmed, he "brained the other three with it."
In Spain and Italy, about the same time, the game is mentioned under more gentle guise. An interesting letter is preserved, written by Damianus, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, to Pope Alexander II., who was elected pope in 1061. Damianus tells the pope how he was travelling with a bishop of Florence, when,
"having arrived at a hotel, I withdrew into the cell of a priest, while he remained with a crowd of travellers in the spacious house. In the morning I was informed by my servant that the bishop had been playing chess; which information like an arrow pierced my heart. At a convenient hour I sent for him, and said, in a tone of reproof, 'The hand is stretched out, the rod is ready for the offender.' 'Let the fault be proved,' said he, 'and penance shall not be refused.' 'Was it well,' I rejoined, 'was it worthy of the character you bear, to spend the evening in the vanity of chess-play, and defile the hands and tongue which ought to be the mediator between man and the Deity? Are you aware that, by the canonical law, bishops who are dice-players are ordered to be deposed?' He, however, making himself a shield of defence from the difference of names, said that dice was one thing, and chess another; consequently, that the canon only forbade dice, but tacitly allowed chess. To which I replied, 'Chess is not named in the text, but the general term of dice comprehends both games; wherefore, since dice is forbidden and chess is not named, it follows without doubt that both are equally condemned.'"
It is safe to conclude from this that the cardinal himself was not familiar with the game.
Females are represented on many illuminated manuscripts, as well as in early romances, as playing chess together or with knights. In one called Blonde of Oxford, Jean, a young French nobleman, comes to England and enters the household service of the Earl of Oxford. It was a part of Jean's duty to attend on the Lady Blonde, daughter of the earl, and serve her at table; after dinner, he goes hawking and hunting with them, and also teaches the ladies French. "Then he entertains the Ladye Blonde, and teaches her chess, and he often says check and mate to her."
Similar scenes are in Ipomydon, as in the following quoted by Strutt:
"When theye had dyned, as you saye,
Lords and ladys yede to playe,
Some to tables, some to chesse,
And other gamys more or less."
"The writers immediately after the conquest," says a distinguished antiquarian, "speak of the Saxons as playing at chess; and pretend that they learned the game of the Danes. Gaimar, who gives an interesting story of the deceit practised on King Edgar (A.D. 973) by Ethelwold, when sent to visit the beautiful Elfthrida, daughter of Orgar of Devonshire, describes the young lady and her noble father passing the day at chess." (Wright.)
Such examples might be multiplied to tediousness; but one more notice of it among the Northmen is worth giving, because it is found in one of the grandest of modern epics, by the Swedish poet, Tegner, founded on events in the life of one of their most renowned heroes—The Legend of Frithiof.
The fortunes of the valiant Frithiof, who was the son of a thane, seem to have been ruled by his love for the fair Ingeborn, daughter of a king, and the scorn with which her two brothers spurned his proposal for her hand. A day of retaliation, however, soon came. Helgé and Halfdan, the brothers, were threatened by a neighboring foe, and sent to Frithiof—certainly with a sublime forgetfulness of what had passed—to ask his aid. When the messenger arrived, he was playing chess with his friend, Bjorn, the Bear. Frithiof refuses very decidedly. His heart still pines for Ingeborn; and, like a true Viking, he betakes himself for consolation to the sea, which he vows shall be "his home in life and his grave in death." The chess-board beside which Frithiof doubtless forgot his griefs for a brief space is described as magnificent—
"Beside a chess-board's checkered frame
Frithiof and Bjorn pursued their game;
Silver was each alternate plane,
And each alternate plane of gold."[168]
Perhaps some reader will be glad to learn that, after a few years, "he is weary of sea-fights and of hewing men in twain," and returns home to marry Ingeborn.
Such was one of the early chess-players.