IT'S A COUNTRY LIFE

 

"Hand 'ba and other bonkers games". Yes, read the bottom line of the cover photo for "Country Life". It's a little weekly treat I have to treasure when I wait for my better half as she is at the tills in Tesco. I go to magazine rack and flip through "Country Life" magazine. Why not? There's a charming "Page 3" girl who has just got engaged, married, won at Epsom or been hunting; there's the cartoon at the back and today an article on old sports! Luxury.

Since I am an old sport I thought I might advertise the magazine too, so I took a photo of the relevant pages in Harry Pearson's article and here we are! It's relevant of course, as it refers to Shrove Tuesday, when the nation celebrated pancakes-self distancing of course.

It's not just pancakes, but traditional mass football, raucous, rough, dating back to Norman Conquest, the Breton game of SOULE (below).

Few of these original games survive in their original form, not surprising since the Men of Suffolk v Men of Norfolk on Diss Common resulted in nine deaths. Despite this tragic outcome, these games were modified and eventually ended up as modern association football and rugby or something similar.

Games known as "hand'ba" or hurling (with no sticks!) were played before they became outlawed due to loss of life and damage to property. Hand 'ba was played with a ball of any shape or size. The Ashbourne, Derbyshire game used a ball that was cork filled whereas at Atherstone, Lancashire, the ball was huge and full of water. In Jedburgh, a place where the original game used a severed head of an Englishman, the ball was leather bound and full of moss. 

Games usually had two sides, known locally as "Uppies" and "Downies", defending their "end of town" and in Duns, on the border it was "marrieds v singles"-maybe a good reason to stay single (or marry of course).

Hand 'ba (ball below) used hundreds of  players with all and sundry joining in when they wanted to. Time doesn't appear to be a feature, with games often going on for hours. Sometimes the ball disappeared. In Alnwick, Northumberland, goals were a bit like the modern version, but some goals (known as a hail) maybe the pulpit in Duns' church, or to score, a "try" across a parish border counted. At Atherstone who ever possesses the ball at 5pm wins! The Ashbourne goals are a pair of plinths, embedded into the banks of the River Henmore -three miles apart. In St Columb Major in Cornwall, the playing area is about 25 square miles. 

There are no referees, linesmen or tough judges, although at Alnwich the umpire holds a bugle. The ball can be carried, punched, thrown, stuffed up the jumper, any skill used by Diego! Daniel Defoe described the match he saw in Cornwall as "brutish and furious". Yet "hand 'ba" demands skill, strength, cunning and local knowledge. The present pandemic has interfered with traditional games of course.

Other sports to consider: Paganica-Romans played with a stick and a ball, stuffed with feathers-golf? Sphairistike-an outdoor summer racket game from 1873, developed by Capt Clopton Wingfield, in the English army, that developed into tennis. There is Battledore and shuttlecock keeping the shuttle cock in the air using small bats (battledores) evolved into Badminton. The ancient squash game invented in King's Bench and Fleet debtors' prison in the 18th Century, developed into Racquets played in "Public" schools. Finally, Tewaaraton involved 100-1000s players on a pitch 6 miles long. This native American game turned out to be lacrosse.