No. 154. A Table-Board (Backgammon) of the Fourteenth Century.
In the manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii.) the figure of the board is given to illustrate a very curious treatise on the game of tables, written in Latin, in the fourteenth, or even perhaps in the thirteenth, century. The writer begins by informing us, that “there are many games at tables with dice, of which the first is the long game, and is the game of the English, and it is common, and played as follows” (multi sunt ludi ad tabulas cum taxillis, quorum primus est longus ludus, et est ludus Anglicorum, et est communis, et est talis naturæ), meaning, I presume, that it was the game usually played in England. From the directions given for playing it, this game seems to have had a close general resemblance to backgammon. The writer of the treatise says that it was played with three dice, or with two dice, in which latter case they counted six at each throw for the third dice. In some of the other games described here, two dice only were used. We learn from this treatise the English terms for two modes of winning at the “long game” of tables—the one being called “lympoldyng,” the other “lurchyng;” and a person losing by the former was said to be “lympolded.” The writer of this tract gives directions for playing at several other games of tables, and names some of them—such as “paume carie,” the Lombard’s game (ludus Lombardorum), the “imperial,” the “provincial,” “baralie,” and “faylys.”
This game continued long to exist in England under its old name of tables. Thus Shakespeare:— This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice.
—Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act v. Sc. 2.
The game appears at this time to have been a favourite one in the taverns and ordinaries. Thus, in a satirical tract in verse, printed in 1600, we are told of— An honest vicker, and a kind consort,
That to the alehouse friendly would resort,
To have a game at tables now and than,
Or drinke his pot as soone as any man.
—Letting of Humours Blood, 1600.
And one of the most popular of the satirical writers of that period, Dekker, in his “Lanthorne and Candle-Light,” printed in 1620, says, punningly,—“And knowing that your most selected gallants are the onelye table-men that are plaid withal at ordinaries, into an ordinarye did he most gentleman-like convay himselfe in state.” We learn from another tract of the same author, the “Gul’s Hornbooke,” that the table-men at this time were usually painted.
We hardly perceive how the name of tables disappeared. It seems probable that at this time the game of tables meant simply what we now call backgammon, a word the oldest mention of which, so far as I have been able to discover, occurs in Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” first printed in 1646. It is there written baggamon. In the “Compleat Gamester,” 1674, backgammon and ticktack occur as two distinct games at what would have formerly been called tables; and another similar game was called Irish. Curiously enough, in the earlier part of the last century the game of backgammon was most celebrated as a favourite game among country parsons.
Another game existing in the middle ages, but much more rarely alluded to, was called dames, or ladies, and has still preserved that name in French. In English, it was changed for that of draughts, derived no doubt from the circumstance of drawing the men from one square to another. Our cut [No. 155], taken from a manuscript in the British Museum of the beginning of the fourteenth century, known commonly as Queen Mary’s Psalter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a lady and gentleman playing at dames, or draughts, differing only from the character of the game at the present day in the circumstance that the draughtsmen are evidently square.
No. 155. A Game at Draughts.
No. 156. Cards in the Fourteenth Century.