95. Kayles.—XIV. Century.
Here the pastime is played with eight pins; and the form of these pins is also different, but that might depend entirely upon the fancy of the makers. One of them, in both cases, is taller than the rest.
The arrangement of the kayle-pins differs greatly from that of the nine-pins, the latter being placed upon a square frame in three rows, and the former in one row only. The two delineations here copied represent that species of the game called club-kayles, "jeux de quilles à baston," so denominated from the club or cudgel that was thrown at them.
VII.—CLOSH.
The game of cloish, or closh, mentioned frequently in the ancient statutes, [834] seems to have been the same as kayles, or at least exceedingly like it: cloish was played with pins, which were thrown at with a bowl instead of a truncheon, and probably differed only in name from the nine-pins of the present time.
VIII.—LOGGATS.
This, I make no doubt, was a pastime analogous to kayles and cloish, but played chiefly by boys and rustics, who substituted bones for pins. "Loggats," says sir Thomas Hanmer, one of the editors of Shakespeare, "is the ancient name of a play or game, which is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the thirty-third statute of Henry VIII.: it is the same which is now called kittle-pins, in which the boys often make use of bones instead of wooden pins, throwing at them with another bone instead of bowling." Hence Shakespeare, in Hamlet, speaks thus; "did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with them?" And this game is evidently referred to in an old play, entitled The longer thou livest the more Fool thou art, published in the reign of queen Elizabeth, [835] where a dunce boasts of his skill
At skales, and the playing with a sheepes-joynte.
In skales, or kayles, the sheepes-joynte was probably the bone used instead of a bowl.