XIII.
BALL, AND SIMILAR SPORTS.
I call, I call; who doe ye call?
The maids to catch this cowslip ball;
But since these cowslips fading be,
Troth, leave the flowers, and maids take me.
Yet, if but neither you will doe,
Speak but the word, and I'll take you.
Herrick.
No. 128.
The "Times" of Sports.
In an account of boys' sports, it would not be proper to omit some allusion to the custom of having a certain "time" of the year devoted to each amusement. These "times" succeeded each other almost as regularly as the flowers of summer, the children dropping one and taking up another every year at the same season. This succession, which the children themselves could hardly explain beforehand, but remembered when the occasion came, has impressed itself on observers as almost a matter of instinct. There was, however, a considerable degree of variation in the succession of sports in different parts of the country, and as the practice, though by no means obsolete, is now less strictly observed than formerly, we cannot give any very exact details on this head. It seems, however, that this succession was only partly dependent on the climate, and in part inherited from the mother country.
Thus, in all the states from Maine to Georgia, the first "time" was marble-time. In New England, the snow had hardly disappeared, when boys began to make the necessary holes in the ground, kneeling for that purpose on the night-frozen soil, from which the moisture was just oozing out, to the great detriment of their pantaloons. A friend, indeed, asserts that this was the object of the choice of seasons. But at the same time boys in Georgia (and, indeed, in England and Germany) were playing the same game.
The subsequent succession of sports in New York is indicated by the adage, "Top-time's gone, kite-time's come, and April Fool's day will soon be here."
In Georgia the succession was, kites, tops, and hoops. In that region the season for popguns is when the China-berries[107] ripen. It is a provision of Providence, a clear case of design, thinks a friend, that just at that season the elder pith is ripe enough to be pushed out, and so leave the stalks empty to form the barrel of the weapon.
Ball is especially a holiday game. In Boston, Fast-day (the first Thursday of April) was particularly devoted to this sport. In England, the playing of ball at Easter-tide seems to have been a custom of the festival, inherited probably from pre-Christian ages. Foot-ball was a regular amusement on the afternoon of a New England Thanksgiving.