IV.
It is remarkable in the history of chess how very trifling the variations which have ever been made in it. The lapse of time, which has swept away cities and their inhabitants, which has so blotted from human speech the words of those who once held converse around it that their inscriptions on stone are unintelligible, has left it almost unaltered.
Coming close to that domestic life of nations of which chess made one pleasure, what has not changed? Modes of dress, construction of dwellings, fashions of entertainment—all have had their mutations. Yet the game, as far back as the earliest accounts of it, has been almost literally such as we see it. One feature has always marked it, chess; there has always been a sovereign to be attacked and defended, and inferior pieces to accomplish these ends in combination, yet by different means. The board of sixty-four squares has also almost invariably been maintained.
Two pieces were modified when it passed from Arabia to Spain, or rather, from the Saracen to the Christian. In Arabia and Persia, there was no female on the board; what we call "queen" was, with them, "vizier or counsellor," and called pherz, ferz, or fers. This was retained in Europe until about the eleventh century, when it was supplanted by our queen. But wherefore a queen? We shall see.
Several events combined to make this period the age of poetry and of a peculiar deference to womankind. It will be remembered that in the eleventh century, 1095, was preached the first Crusade, a thing of romance and poetry itself. However different the motives which actuated that crowd of nobles and warriors who joined in creating the mighty army whose advance-guard was led by the monk Peter, to all appearance each one was a hero. Country and kingdom, home and love, happiness of wife or maiden, was the sacrifice professedly offered at the shrine of a holy enthusiasm enkindled by faith. Every earthly interest, every tie of affection, all consideration of self, was to be accounted nothing, compared with the sacred obligations involved in the expedition.
The means of expressing all these delicate sentiments and deep emotions, and furthermore of expressing them in poetry, was happily opened to them at this era in the language of the troubadours—the Langue d'Oc. The polish which poetry had received from the Arabians in Spain had elevated it to an art, and made it so attractive to the more refined classes that the highest born, even kings and princes, did not think it beneath them to cultivate it; and he added greatly to his renown who had qualified himself to express in it the two ruling passions of his soul—his martial ardor and his devotion to his ladye-love. Every knight, almost, was a troubadour, and the homage rendered to woman seems almost fabulous. A French writer says of this period:
"Love had assumed a new character.... It was not more tender and passionate than among the Romans; but it was more respectful, and something of a mystery was mingled with its sentiment. Women were considered rather as angelic beings than as dependents and inferiors. The task of serving and protecting them was considered honorable, as though they were the representatives of the divinity upon earth; and to this worship was added an ardor of feeling, passion, and desire, peculiar to the people of the south, and the expression of which was borrowed from the Arabians."[169]
Woman was not slow in extending her influence to more prosaic matters than Les Cours d'Amour and the inspirations of poetry; and history furnishes an abundance of examples where female interference was permitted and female decision respected in the gravest affairs of life. After Alphonso VI. of Castile had driven the Moors from Toledo, he granted to such of them as chose to return the use of a cathedral to serve as a mosque; but, says history, "he soon broke his promise, and deprived them of it, at the instigation of and in order to please his wife."
Who, then, but a woman could have routed the grand-vizier from the chess-board and taken his place?
The other piece altered is the bishop, which of course was not so called by the orientals. This piece with the Arabians and Persians was represented by an elephant, and named pil or phil. In southern Europe, the name was modified into alfil and aufin, and is found so in old writers; but at a very early period the bishop seems to have been generally adopted. In northern Europe, it was not so; the Russians and Swedes still retain the elephant. What we now call castle, and sometimes rook, was also called by the Saracens roc, and by the Persians rokh, signifying champion or foot-soldier, and shaped accordingly. This form is seen in some ancient chess-men in the British Museum, supposed to be of Icelandic manufacture; the Icelanders called this piece hrokr. These chess-men, many in number and carved in ivory—that is, the tusk of the walrus—were found in the year 1831, on the coast of the Isle of Lewes, and are referred by antiquaries back to the twelfth century. They are the remnants of seven or eight distinct sets, and are therefore supposed to have belonged to some dealer who was shipwrecked there. The carving on them, and the costumes, bear traces of being Scandinavian. The king is in a sitting posture, crowned, and has a sword in his hand, which he rests crossing his lap; the queen also is crowned, and holds a drinking-horn, such as the northern women used in serving mead and ale to their guests; one of them represents a bishop with mitre and crozier; the knights are on horseback, and are covered with armor; and here is the roc of the Saracens in its original form, a kind of foot-soldier, in place of the castle—which, however, is yet called rook. The remainder are pawns. Thus they are nearly identical with any set of modern chess-men, although fabricated more than seven hundred years ago.
The largest king in this collection, in his sitting posture, is more than four inches in height and near seven in circumference. The other pieces are smaller, but correspond. The chess-board which accommodated such pieces must have been a formidable weapon in a strong hand, and quite likely to "break heads and scatter brains."
Many old books are to be found in public and private libraries which contain descriptions of chess-men, rules for playing, etc. In the twelfth century, such a manual was composed by some devotee of the game in Latin verse. A little later, a volume was written in Latin by Jacques de Cessolas; it was translated into French by Jean de Vigny, and entitled Moralization of Chess. It may be seen in English in Caxton's Boke of Chesse, published in London, 1474.
Damiano, a Portuguese, in the fifteenth century compiled a book of directions for playing, with examples of eighty-eight games.
A little volume, very amusing in its quaint old English, was published in London in the reign of Elizabeth; it is dedicated to Lord Robert Dudley, afterward the celebrated Earl of Leicester. It is entitled, The Pleasaunt and Wittie Playe of the Cheasts, reviewed with Instructions both to Learn it Easily and to Play it Well. Lately translated out of Italian into French, and now set forthe in Englishe by James Rowbotham.
In it, among many other things, the author describes the chess-men:
"As for the fashion of the pieces, that is according to the fantasie of the workeman, which maketh them after this manner. Some make them lyke men, whereof the kynge is the highest, and the queene (which some name amasone or ladye) is the next, bothe two crowned. The bishoppes some name alphins, some fooles, and some princes, lyke as also they are next unto the kynge and queene, other some cal them archers, and they are fashioned accordinge to the wyll of the workeman. The knights some cal horsemen, and they are men on horsebacke. The rookes some call elephantes, cariynge towres upon their backes, and men within the towres. The paunes some cal fote-men, as they are souldiours on fote, cariynge some of them pykes, and other some javelyns and targets. Other makers of cheast-men make them other fashions, but use thereof wyll cause perfect knowledge."
Such has chess been through times past; it numbers still among its votaries the noble and the learned; and it is advocated by some of them with an enthusiasm surely never surpassed in the days long, long gone by in its oriental home.
It has floated down to us from those days like a leaf on some broad stream beneath whose waves mightier things have sunk.