“A rural game,” says Nares, “played by making nine holes in the ground, in the angles and sides of a square, and placing stones and other things upon, according to certain rules.” Moor (Suffolk Words and Phrases) says: “This is, I believe, accurate as far as it goes, of our Suffolk game. A hole in the middle is necessary.” In Norfolk, Holloway (Dict. Prov.) says that nine round holes are made in the ground, and a ball aimed at them from a certain distance. A second game is played with a board having nine holes, through one of which the ball must pass. Nares quotes several authors to show the antiquity of the game. He shows that the “[Nine Men’s Morris]” of our ancestors was but another name for “Nine Holes.” Nine, a favourite and mysterious number everywhere, prevails in games.
Strutt (Sports, p. 384) also describes the game as played in two ways—a game with bowling marbles at a wooden bridge; and another game, also with marbles, in which four, five, or six holes, and sometimes more, are made in the ground at a distance from each other, and the business of every one of the players is to bowl a marble, by a regular succession, into all the holes, and he who completes in the fewest bowls obtains the victory. In Northamptonshire a game called “Nine Holes,” or “Trunks,” is played with a long piece of wood or bridge with nine arches cut in it, each arch being marked with a figure over it, from one to nine, in the following rotation—VII., V., III., I., IX., II., IIII., VI., VIII. Each player has two flattened balls which he aims to bowl edgeways under the arches; he scores the number marked over the arch he bowls through, and he that attains to forty-five first wins the game (Baker’s Northamptonshire Glossary). In Arch. Journ., xlix. 320, in a paper by Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, this game is described, and diagrams of the game given which had been found by him cut in a stone bench in the church of Ardeley, Hertfordshire, and elsewhere. He has also seen the game played in London. It is evidently the same game as described by Nares and Moor above.
See “[Bridgeboard],” “[Nine Men’s Morris].”
Nine Men’s Morris
In the East Riding this game is played thus: A flat piece of wood about eight inches square is taken, and on it twenty-four holes are bored by means of a hot skewer or piece of hot iron.
Each of the two players has nine wooden pegs, which are either coloured or shaped differently, and the object of each player is to get three of his own pegs in a straight line ([fig. 1]). It is called “[Merrils].”—Sheffield (S. O. Addy).
Cotgrave’s Dictionarie, 1632, says: “Merelles, le jeu de merelles, the boyish game called merrils, or fiue-pennie morris. Played here most commonly with stones, but in France with pawns or men made of purpose, and termed merelles.” Strutt (Sports, p. 317) says: “This was why the game received this name. It was formerly called ‘Nine Men’s Morris’ and ‘Five-penny Morris,’ and is a game of some antiquity. It was certainly much used by the shepherds formerly, and continues to be used by them and other rustics to the present hour.” An illustration of the form of the merelle table and the lines upon it, as it appeared in the fourteenth century, is given by him, and he observes that the lines have not been varied. The black spots at every angle and intersection of the lines are the places for the men to be laid upon. The men are different in form and colour for distinction’s sake, and from the moving these men backwards and forwards, as though they were dancing a morris, I suppose the pastime received the name of “Nine Men’s Morris,” but why it should have been called “Five-penny Morris” I do not know. The manner of playing is briefly thus:—Two persons, having each of them nine pieces or men, lay them down alternately, one by one, upon the spots, and the business of either party is to prevent his antagonist from placing three of his pieces so as to form a row of three without the intervention of an opponent piece. If a row be formed, he that made it is at liberty to take up one of his competitor’s pieces from any part he thinks most to his own advantage, excepting he has made a row, which must not be touched, if he have another piece upon the board that is not a component part of that row. When all the pieces are laid down they are played backwards and forwards in any direction that the lines run, but can only move from one spot to another at one time. He that takes off all his antagonist’s pieces is the conqueror. The rustics, when they have not materials at hand to make a table, cut the lines in the same form upon the ground and make a small hole for every dot. They then collect stones of different forms or colours for the pieces, and play the game by depositing them in the holes in the same manner that they are set over the dots on the table. Hence Shakespeare, describing the effects of a wet and stormy season, says—
“The folds stand empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock—
The Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud.”