Amidst the whirlpools.
thereby, doubtless, scoring a lost ball. He describes this as ‘a stool-ball chance.’ Chapman does not say whether the ball was bowled to Nausicaa. Everything shows that Dr. Johnson was writing at random when he described stool-ball as a game ‘in which a ball is driven from stool to stool.’ Chapman conceives Nausicaa as making a ‘boundary hit.’ There would be no need of such hitting if balls were only ‘driven from stool to stool.’
Strutt’s remarks on stool-ball merely show that he did not appreciate the importance of the game as an early form of cricket. ‘I have been informed,’ he says, ‘that a pastime called stool-ball is practised to this day in the northern parts of England, which consists simply in setting a stool upon the ground, and one of the players takes his place before it, while his antagonist, standing at a distance, tosses a ball with the intention of striking the stool, and this it is the business of the former to prevent by beating it away with his hand, reckoning one to the game for every stroke of the ball,’ apparently without running. ‘If, on the contrary, it should be missed by the hand and strike the stool, the players change places.’ Strutt adds, in a note, that he believes the player may be caught out. He describes another game in which stools are set as ‘bases’ in a kind of base-ball. He makes the usual quotations from Durfey about ‘a match for kisses at stool-ball to play.’[4]
Brand’s notes on stool-ball do no more than show that men and women played for small wagers, as in Herrick,
At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play
For sugar, cakes, and wine.[5]
It is plain enough that stool-ball was a game for girls, or for boys and girls, and Herrick and Lucia. As at present played stool-ball is a woman’s game; but no stool is used: what answers to the wicket is a square board at a certain height on a pole, much as if one bowled at the telegraph instead of the stumps. Consequently, as at base-ball, only full pitches can be tossed. However, in stool-ball we recognise the unconscious beginnings of better things. As much may be said for ‘cat-and-dog.’ This may be regarded either as a degraded attempt at early cricket, played by economists who could not afford a ball, or as a natural volks-kriket, dating from a period of culture in which balls had not yet been invented. The archæologist will prefer the latter explanation, but we would not pedantically insist on either alternative. In Jamieson’s ‘Scotch Dictionary,’[6] cat-and-dog is described as a game for three.[7] Two holes are cut at a distance of thirteen yards. At each hole stands a player with a club, called a ‘dog.’ A piece of wood,[8] four inches long by one in circumference, is tossed, in place of a ball, to one of the dogsmen. His object is to keep the cat out of the hole. ‘If the cat be struck, he who strikes it changes places with the person who holds the other club, and as often as the positions are changed one is counted as won in the game by the two who hold the clubs.’ Jamieson says this is an ‘ancient sport in Angus and Lauder.’ A man was bowled when the cat got into the hole he defended. We hear nothing of ‘caught and bowled.’[9]
Cat-and-dog, or, more briefly, cat, was a favourite game with John Bunyan. He was playing when a voice from heaven (as he imagined) suddenly darted into his soul, with some warning remarks, as he was ‘about to strike the cat from the hole.’ The cat, here, seems to have been quiescent. ‘Leaving my cat on the ground, I looked up to Heaven,’ and beheld a vision. Let it be remembered that Bunyan was playing on Sunday. The game of cat, as known to him, was, apparently, rather a rude variety of knurr and spell than of cricket. This form is mentioned by Strutt.[10] Both stool-ball and cat-and-dog have closer affinities with cricket than club-ball as represented in Strutt’s authorities.[11] Perhaps we may say that wherever stool-ball was played, or cat-and-dog, there cricket was potentially present. As to the derivation of the word ‘cricket,’ philologists differ as much as usual. Certainly ‘cricket’ is an old word for a stool, though in this sense it does not occur in Skeat.[12] In Todd’s ‘Johnson,’ we find, ‘Cricket: a low seat or stool, from German kriechen, to creep.’ In Scotland we talk of a ‘creepy-stool.’
It’s a wise wife that kens her weird,