This game is supposed by Jamieson to be equivalent to “Drive the Goose,” and the game seems to be the same with one still played by young people in some parts of Angus, in which one of the company, having something that excites ridicule unknowingly pinned behind, is pursued by all the rest, who still cry out, “Hunt the Goose!”—Jamieson.
Camp
A game formerly much in use among schoolboys, and occasionally played by men in those parts of Suffolk on the sea coast—more especially in the line of Hollesley Bay between the Rivers Orwell and Alde, sometimes school against school, or parish against parish. It was thus played: Goals were pitched at the distance of 150 or 200 yards from each other; these were generally formed of the thrown-off clothes of the competitors. Each party has two goals, ten or fifteen yards apart. The parties, ten or fifteen on a side, stand in line, facing their own goals and each other, at about ten yards distance, midway between the goals, and nearest that of their adversaries. An indifferent spectator, agreed on by the parties, throws up a ball, of the size of a common cricket-ball, midway between the confronted players, and makes his escape. It is the object of the players to seize and convey the ball between their own goals. The rush is therefore very great: as is sometimes the shock of the first onset, to catch the falling ball. He who first can catch or seize it speeds therefore home, pursued by his opponents (thro’ whom he has to make his way), aided by the jostlings and various assistances of his own sidesmen. If caught and held, or in imminent danger of being caught, he throws the ball—but must in no case give it—to a less beleaguered friend, who, if it be not arrested in its course, or be jostled away by the eager and watchful adversaries, catches it; and he hastens homeward, in like manner pursued, annoyed, and aided, winning the notch (or snotch) if he contrive to carry, not throw, it between his goals. But this in a well-matched game is no easy achievement, and often requires much time, many doublings, detours, and exertions. I should have noticed, that if the holder of the ball be caught with the ball in his possession, he loses a snotch; if, therefore, he be hard pressed, he throws it to a convenient friend, more free and in breath than himself. At the loss (or gain) of a snotch, a recommence takes place, arranging which gives the parties time to take breath. Seven or nine notches are the game—and these it will sometimes take two or three hours to win. Sometimes a large football was used—and the game was then called “Kicking Camp”—and if played with the shoes on, “Savage Camp.”—Moor’s Suffolk Words.
(b) The sport and name are very old. The “Camping pightel” occurs in a deed of the 30 Henry VI.—about 1486; Cullum’s Hawstead, p. 113, where Tusser is quoted in proof, that not only was the exercise manly and salutary, but good also for the pightel or meadow:
In meadow or pasture (to grow the more fine)
Let campers be camping in any of thine;
Which if ye do suffer when low is the spring,
You gain to yourself a commodious thing.
—P. 65.
And he says, in p. 56:
Get campers a ball,
To camp therewithall.
Ray says that the game prevails in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. The Rev. S. Arnot, in Notes and Queries, 8th series, vol. ii. p. 138, who was rector of Ilket’s Hall, in the county of Suffolk, says the ball was about the size of a cricket-ball, and was driven through a narrow goal; and from the evidence of the parish clerk it seems certain that it was not “[Football].” See also Spurden’s East Anglian Words, and County Folk-lore, Suffolk, pp. 57-59.
There are Upper Campfield and Lower Campfield at Norton Woodseats. They are also called Camping fields. This field was probably the place where football and other village games were played. These fields adjoin the Bocking fields. In Gosling’s Map of Sheffield, 1736, Campo Lane is called Camper Lane. The same map shows the position of the old Latin school, or grammar school, and the writing school. These schools were at a very short distance from Campo Lane, and it seems probable that here the game of [football] was played (Addy’s Sheffield Glossary). “The camping-land appropriated to this game occurs in several instances in authorities of the fifteenth century” (Way’s Note in Prompt. Parv., p. 60). In Brinsley’s Grammar Schoole, cited by Mr. Furnivall in Early English Meals and Manners, p. lxii., is this passage: “By this meanes also the schollars may be kept euer in their places, and hard to their labours, without that running out to the Campo (as they tearme it) at school times, and the manifolde disorders thereof; as watching and striuing for the clubbe and loytering then in the fields.”