bowls, but instead of the smooth prepared surface of the bowling green, this game is played on any piece of ground: "And as the lecco," says Mr. Story, "often runs into hollows, or poises itself on some uneven declivity, it is sometimes a matter of no small difficulty to play the other balls near to it. The great skill of the game consists, however, in displacing the balls of the adverse party so as to make the balls of the playing party count, and a clever player will often change the whole aspect of affairs by one well-directed throw. In the Piazza di Termini numerous parties may be seen every bright day in summer or spring playing this game under the locust trees, surrounded by idlers who stand by to approve or condemn, and to give their advice. The French soldiers [written in 1864] free from guard or drill, or from practising trumpet-calls in the old agger of Servius Tullius near by, are sure to be rolling balls in this fascinating game. Having heated their blood sufficiently at it, they adjourn to a little osteria in the Piazza to refresh themselves with a glass of asciutto wine, after which they sit on a bench outside the door, or stretch themselves under the trees and take a siesta with their handkerchiefs over their eyes, while other parties take their turn at the bocce."

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CHAPTER X.

KAYLES.

Waive quoits and nine pins, those bear-garden sports.

T. D'URFEY.

AMONG the quieter games that amused our ancestors in their abundant leisure hours, none have had a more chequered career, or suffered more ups and downs in popular estimation than the kindred pastimes that have been known at various times as kayles, loggats, nine pins, skittles, and several other

names.

In early times we find them in high favour as gentle, healthful exercises, specially adapted for ladies, monks, old men and boys; then down they go in the scale of opinion and are fulminated against by Acts of Parliament and social reformers as "privy moths that eat up the credit of many idle citizens." Now and then there were breaks in the cloud their gambling and drinking accompaniments cast over these games-as in those years of last century when they enjoyed a fitful popularity at a time when, curiously enough, cricket was not considered a proper game for gentlemen to play at—but in general the respectable half of the world has looked askance at pastimes excellent in themselves, and likely enough to be popular again if they could only be dissociated in men's minds from ideas of bad beer and "sharping."

Whether we owe these games, like lawn-bowls, to the Roman invader, it is difficult to say, but at any rate they are among the oldest of our extant pastimes.

In Capgrave's "Chronicle" we are told that Pope Gregory IX.

commanded his penitencer, Raymond, to gather "out of many books that book which they yclepe 'Decretals.' And the Pope wrote to the doctors of law that they should in school use this compiling." A copy of this text book was made for the priory of St. Bartholomew, founded by Rayer, monk and jester to Henry I., in West Smithfield. This copy, a manuscript of the thirteenth century, is now in the British Museum "It is lavishly adorned with pictures," says Mr. Henry Morley, the historian of Rayer's Priory and Fair, "which are valuable illustrations of the manners, arts, and literature of the time;' and here, among the many games figured by the old friar of St. Bartholomew, we find a player in the act of casting a stick at nine pins, which the fiiar's bad perspective arranges in three rows, perpendicularly one above the other.

More accurate in drawing than the delineator of the recreations of the youth of London on the "Smooth Field" six centuries ago, are the illuminators whose works are copied by Strutt, from MSS. of about the same age. In an engraving from a Book of Prayers that belonged to Mr. Francis Douce, we see the player about to cast his bâton at six pins arranged in a row, while in another, from a MS. in the Royal Library, the castor has knocked over three pins and is about to repeat his throw at the five still standing in a line with the fallen three. In this old game so figured, while the number of pins varied, the missile thrown is always a stick, not, as now, a ball. This was a form of the game of bowling "which was called in French," says Mr. Thomas Wright, "the jeu de quules a baston, and in English club-kayles." In kayles, or closh, as it was also called, a ball was used instead of the bâton, as we may infer from the qualitying "club" here, as well as from more positive evidence of later date.

Great as is the antiquity of the game of pins proved by these illustrations, it is of yesterday compared with the age of implements of the game discovered under twelve feet of peat in Kirkcudbright in 1834, if we apply to this depth

of peat the calculations of growth put forward by many geologists.

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Mr. Joseph Train, whose help in supplying him with the groundwork of some of his novels, Sir Walter Scott so heartily acknowledges, tells us how these interesting relics of antiquity came to light. "In the summer of 1834," he writes, as the servants of Mr. Bell of Baryown were casting peats on Ironmacaunnie Moor, when cutting near the bottom of the moss they laid open with their spades what appeared to be the instruments of an ancient game, consisting of an oaken ball eighteen inches in circumference, and seven wooden pins, each thirteen inches in length, of a conical shape, with a circular top. These ancient keel pins, as they are termed by Strutt, were all standing erect on the hard till, equidistant from each other, with the exception of two, which pointed towards the ball that lay about a yard in front, from which it may be inferred they were overthrown in the course of the game. The ball had been formed of solid oak, and from its decayed state must have remained undisturbed for centuries till discovered at a depth of not less than twelve feet from the original surface. At Pompeii utensils are often found seemingly in the very position in which they were last used. This may be accounted for by the suddenness of the calamity that befell that devoted city; but what induced or impelled the ancient gamesters in this remote corner of the Glenkens to leave the instruments of their amusement in what might be considered the middle of the game?"

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Dr. Daniel Wilson tells us, in his "Prehistoric Annals of Scotland," that in this lonely moss peats have been cut from "It were vain,” he says, time immemorial. to speculate on the origin or owners of these homely relics of obsolete pastimes; yet to the curious fancy, indulging in the reanimation of such long-silent scenes, they seem suggestive of the sudden intrusion, it may be of invaders, the hasty call to arms, the utter desolation of the scene, and then the slow lapse of

unnumbered centuries, during which the moss accumulated above them so gently that it seems as if the old revellers were to return to play out their unfinished game."

We have ample evidence that our game enjoyed considerable popularity in the later years of the fifteenth century among all classes of society. That it was played by Queen Elizabeth and her ladies in 1472 we know from an interesting contemporary MS. published by Sir F. Madden in the Archæologia, vol. xxvi., entitled the "Narratives of the Arrival in England of Louis of Bruges, Seigneur de la Gruthuyse."

When Edward IV., after Warwick's landing at Dartmouth in 1470, left crown and kingdom in the hands of the kingmaker, and set sail from Lynn for Flanders, his ship was chased by pirate Easterlings, from whom the fugitive king was rescued by Louis de Bruges, the governor of Holland under Charles the Bold of Burgundy.

Louis acted with great kindness to Edward, and in return the king on his restoration made him Earl of Winchester, and caused him to get the thanks of Parliament. The MS. Sir F. Madden edits is the description, by a herald who was an eyewitness of the scene, of his reception in England and creation as Earl of Winchester in 1472. In it we read that after the Burgundian's arrival, "when they had supte, my Lord Chamberlain had hym againe to the kinge's chamber. Then incontinent the kinge had hym to the quene's chamber where she had there her ladyes playinge at the morteaulx, and sum of her ladyes and gentlewomen at the closheys of yvery and dansinge. And sum at divers other games accordinge, the whiche sight was full plesaunte to them." Sir F. Madden quotes from Roquefort's "Glossaire," "Morteaux jeu des petits palets," and thinks it also was probably a game resembling bowls.

A year or two after we thus find his queen and her ladies playing at closh, Edward passed what Barrington calls "the most severe law ever made in any country against gaming," and among the forbidden games we find closh, kayles, and