Fig. 3.
Fig. 5. and Fig. 4.
Curling.—Like most other pastimes, curling is best learned when you are young. Your good golfer, who “swipes” clean and clever from the tee, picked up that draw and swing which the able golfer so much prides himself upon, in youth. It is quite true that laddies in Scotland first learn to skate; yet many of the best hands at “the roaring game” have learned to throw a “stane” ere fifteen. You cannot learn young enough at anything, a true sportsman will tell you. That little, bare-legged herd laddie, who sits on the banks of the Ettrick or Yarrow, will laugh at the middle-aged tyro who vainly tries to fling a fly where there is no fish lying. The young yachtsman gets his tiller hand in his first matches in an open boat; the trigger finger of the crack shot is made over his early successes at rooks or rabbits; and the good seat in the saddle on the back of the Shetland pony; but our boys are ready for their bonspeil, which means a good spell or game. Before giving a description of an actual game, the writer will endeavour to give some idea of what curling is like. In Germany it has been successfully introduced by Sir Edward Malet, the English ambassador, and there is every reason to believe that in a few years it will take as strong a hold of the English people, as already golf has done.
Pennant, in his Tour of the North (1792), writes of it as follows:—“Of all the sports of these parts, that of curling is the favourite, and one unknown in England. It is an amusement of the winter, and played on the ice, by sliding from one mark to another great stones of from forty to seventy pounds weight, of a hemispherical form, with an iron or wooden handle at the top. The object of the player is to lay his stone as near the mark as possible, to guard that of his partner, which had been well laid before, or to strike his antagonist’s.”
The Roaring Game
“The game is played on a carefully-chosen piece of ice called the rink, which should be forty-two yards long, unless special circumstances, such as thaw, and consequently dull ice, require it to be shortened. This piece of ice should be as level, smooth, and free from cracks as possible. There is usually a trifling bias, which however to the skilled curler rather adds interest to the game, as it calls forth additional science in the play.”