42

CHAPTER IV.

TENNIS.

"ALTHOUGH the life of Alexander III.," says Mr. Fraser Tytler, in his "Lives of Scottish Worthies," "cannot be estimated as the boundary between the authentic and the fabulous in Scottish history, yet it may be truly said that with the reign of this able prince the history of the country, when compared with the eras which precede it, assumes a more interesting and attractive form to the general reader."

For our special purpose in this chapter it is a convenient starting-point, as during this king's reign (1249-85) tradition says the Scots borrowed from their good friends, the French, that famous old game, which, under various names—paume, cach, tennis-was for so long such a favourite pastime in this country.

To France the world is indebted for tennis; but when the pastime began to spread abroad from the country of its origin into other lands, is very uncertain. In Britain, at any rate, we can find no traces of it before the days of King Alexander.

The mother of the Scottish king was Marie de Couci, daughter of that flower of chivalry, Enguerand of Picardy. It is supposed that the jeu de paume was introduced into Scotland by the knights who came over from France in the train of the queen; but however this may be, whether they brought it over with them, or merely raised an existing game of "fives" up to the scientific level of their own pastime, it is affirmed that tennis was a favourite game of king and courtiers during the too short reign of good King Alexander.

When the unfortunate stumble over the cliffs of Kinghorn threw the peaceful and prosperous Scotland of Alexander into all the turmoils of the disputed succession and its consequences, tennis, like other games in the North, would naturally give place to sterner realities. The oldest scrap of Scottish song now extant is a fragment of a thirteenth century ballad, preserved in Wynton's "Chronicle." It is an elegy on King Alexander's unfortunate death, and laments the sad changes to Scotland that flowed from it. Away, mourns the old poet, are peace and prosperity, mirth and merry pastimes; nought is left but woe and dire trouble and perplexity :

Quhen Alysandyr our kyng was dede,

:

That Scotland led in luive and lee, [peace]
Away wes sons [abundance] of ale and brede,
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and glee.

Our gold was changyd into lede :
Cryst, born into virgynte,

Succour Scotland, and remede,

That stad is in perplexyte.

That tennis might still be played in Scotland, however, is probable enough, when we remember the intimate connection between that country and France, whither so many of the young Scottish nobles went for their training in knightly accomplishments; but we find no definite mention of the game till we come to the days of the first James of Scotland.

It was in France, as we have said, that what its devotees call "the king of games" originated, but the groundwork of this elaborate pastime is to be found, of course, in the simple old hand-ball play that figured so conspicuously in the every-day life of the classical world. It is of little use to speculate in which of the varieties of ball play mentioned in ancient writers is to be found the progenitor of this pastime, as so much light remains to be thrown on the exact method of play in many of the old games, but the principle of tennis in its simplest form is discernible clearly enough in pila, as

well as in the pastime played with the follis, or large inflated ball that in later times players struck with a kind of glove or hand-guard, between which and the racket the step was short and manifest.

Hand-play, or palm-play (pila palmaria, jeu de paume), are older names of the game, given to it when the propulsive force was applied by the hand alone. "Tennis," as well as "fives," Strutt is inclined to think, was derived from the numbers who engaged in the game; but it is more probable that the derivation of tennis is "tenez," cognate to the Scotch names of the game, "cach" or "caitche," while a favourite explanation of the name of "fives" is that which refers it to the hand of five fingers with which the ball was struck.

Allusions to tennis in the old romances of chivalry are frequent, but what may be called the earliest reference to it in English literature is Chaucer's metaphor in "Troylus and Cryseyde":

But canstow playen racket to and fro,

Nettle in, dokke out, now this, now that, Pandare.

At any rate, a game very like tennis, in which a racket was used to drive a ball to and fro, must have been sufficiently well known, about 1380, to make the metaphor the poet puts in Troylus's mouth intelligible to his readers. Further proof of the existence of the game about this time we find in the second of the restrictive Acts against games passed in this century, when in 1389 the Act of Richard II. includes this amusement among the unlawful games that labourers, artizans, and others were forbidden to engage in.

The name tennis" first occurs in Gower's "Balade," about 1400. If we could believe the by no means very credible story told by the old annalists, one of the most interesting historical events in connection with our game happened when Henry V. was meditating his unjustifiable war against France. The story is familiar enough, of Henry's demand and the Dauphin's answer, indicating that implements of peace better suited the

English king than weapons of war. As Wynkin de Worde puts it, as a reply to the English king's message, the Dauphin, "somewhat in scorne and despyte, sent to him a tonne full of tenes balls." "The Dolphyn," says Hall in his "Chronicle," "thynkyng Kyng Henry to be given still to suche plaies and lyght folies as he exercised and used before the tyme that he was exalted to the croune, sent to hym a tunne of tennis balles to plaie with, as who saied that he had better skill of tennis than of warre." On the foundation of this incident, as told by Holingshed, Shakespeare has constructed his fine scene of the French ambassadors' audience in "Henry V." When the first ambassador gives the Dauphin's message and insulting gift, the English king speaks thus :

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us :
His present and your pains we thank you for.
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.

Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturbed

With chaces.

While Henry was receiving the French ambassadors and their "ton of treasure," there was another king in England whose love for tennis may be said to have cost him his life. This was the Scottish king, James I., whom Henry had most unwarrantably seized in 1405, during a time of truce, while the boy was on his way to be educated in France. Henry, however, spared no pains in giving the young king an education worthy of his rank. The future author of the "King's Quhair" did credit to his tutor, Sir John de Pelham, the Constable of Pevensey, not only in music and the other elegant accomplishments of the time, but his fine tall figure and muscular frame made the captive prince foremost in all knightly exercises and the various games that were then such important parts of a young esquire's education.

After eighteen years' captivity James returned to Scotland, and for four short years we find him giving his whole mind to the improvement of his country. At Yuletide of 1436-7 the Court kept the festival at Perth, in the Blackfriars Monastery, and here, on a February night, after the royal party had broken up, and as James, dressed in a dressing-gown, lingered before the fire of the reception room, chatting with the queen and her ladies, ominous sounds were heard without. The great bolt of the door was found to be away, but a lady-a Douglas -thrust her arm through the staples and held the door till the conspirators snapped this frail defence. Her noble devotion, however, gave James time to tear up a plank of the flooring and drop into a small vault below the apartment, whence it was thought escape would be easy. "As fate would have it," says Dr. Hill Burton, "there had been an opening to it by which he might have escaped, but this had, a few days earlier, been closed by his own order, because the balls by which he played at tennis were apt to fall into it."

Then the

conspirators leapt into the vault, and as the prosaic Adamson, the seventeenth century historian of Perth, tells us :

King James the First, of everlasting name,
Killed by that mischant traitor, Robert Grahame,
Intending of his crown for to have rob'd him,

With twenty-eight wounds in the breast he stab'd him.

When we reach the reigns of the fourth and fifth James of Scotland, we find from that invaluable mine of historical wealth, the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, many evidences of the kings' fondness for this game, and the considerable sums they lost at it with their courtiers, lay and clerical. After several entries of sums paid for balls and for stakes to the king at Stirling, we find this item (under date June 7th, 1496-"To Wat of Lesly that he wan at the cach frae the king, £23 85." Next year, on September 23, he is again losing at tennis in Stirling, this time "with Peter Crechtoune and Patrick Hammiltoune, three unicorns," that is £2 135.;