CHAPTER I.
The Origin of Football.
WHEN a national taste or a national trait is under consideration, sound criticism often falls from a foreign observer. At the present day an American novelist, whose subtle analysis of character is charming English readers, has pronounced his opinion that an Englishman is only to be understood and appreciated when he is seen out of doors in a flannel suit; while a French critic goes further, and assigns a narrower sphere to British ability, by making the observation that an Englishman is only perfectly happy when he has a ball to play with. Certain it is, that, good as they are in any branch of sport, it is in games in which a ball of any kind is used that the members of the English race are the most enthusiastic and proficient players. There is another feature, too, in such games which renders them peculiarly interesting; they have all an ancient and an honourable history. So far back indeed does the history of the different kinds of ball-play reach, that the investigation of their origin, and for the present in particular of the earliest records of the game of football, can hardly fail to produce interesting fruit.
The most learned historian of sports and pastimes, Joseph Strutt, indulges in an elaborate antiquarian inquiry into the origin of the ball, having recourse to the most ancient of the classics for his authorities. Hand-ball, he says, is, “if Homer may be accredited, coeval at least with the destruction of Troy. Herodotus attributes the invention of the ball to the Lydians; succeeding writers have affirmed that a female of distinction named Anagalla, a native of Corcyra, was the first who made a ball for the purposes of pastime, which she presented to Nausica (sic), the daughter of Alcinous, King of Phæacia, and at the same time taught her how to use it.” To emphasize his authority, the antiquary quotes three lines from Pope’s Odyssey (bk. v.).
“O’er the green mead the sporting virgins play,
Their shining veils unbound, along the skies,
Tost and retost, the ball incessant flies.”
The same author is much, and it would seem somewhat unnecessarily, distressed at the fact that the writer of a 14th century manuscript preserved in Trinity College, Oxford, and the Venerable Bede are not in harmony as to the early capacities of the athletic saint, Cuthbert. The former says of him that “he pleyde atte balle with the children that his fellowes were,” while the latter merely makes mention of his general excellence at games involving great muscular exertion. The plain fact of the matter is, that the origin of the ball is one of those matters which must of necessity be lost in antiquity. Nature herself supplies an endless variety of balls of all sizes, suitable for throwing from hand to hand, and the act of playing with them is instinctive. The apple and the orange are, so to speak, objects which nature supplies, not only as objects of food, but also as materials for pastime; clay, too, and snow, are of so plastic a nature that the hands even of children naturally mould them into a spherical form and hurl them to and fro in sport.