the bush was consoling himself with a dram, and all was peace. But that night the country party took up a position behind a stone wall, and when the others came, they sallied forth and there was a battle royal." "So I have seen a parish shinty match in the Highlands become so hot and furious that the leaders were forced to get two pipers and march their troops out of the field in opposite directions to prevent a civil war of parishes." The fact that in the cradle of humanity there has for ages existed a game which is exactly shinty on horseback, helps to support the contention that our game is the oldest of bat-andball games. Not only have those who believe this got the polo of the East, but they contend that in the West they have another proof that this, or something very like it, is the game that would most likely suggest itself to primitive man. Lacrosse, the famous ball-play of the North American Indians, has a strong family likeness to hurling, especially to that variety of it that Strutt tells us he saw played by the Irish in London, when they used a bat, flat on both sides, and curving at the lower end; they caught up and carried the ball on the flat sides for a considerable time, and then either hit it along with the curve or tossed it to their companions, who were following behind, ready to catch it and help it forward to the goal. It is quite clear, however, that Lacrosse was introduced into America by Europeans, Spanish or French, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and thus, of course, is destroyed any argument founded on its supposed originality of invention by the Indians of America. 78 CHAPTER VII. THE GAME OF PALL MALL. AMONG the many things this country has owed to her lively neighbour across the channel, undoubtedly one was the game of pall mall. While in England no trace of the pastime can be found till about the seventeenth century, we know it flourished in France at least as early as the thirteenth. Those who like to begin at the very beginning in such a matter as this tell us that the ancestor of pall mall was the "chugan of the Persians-a game so-called from the long-handled mallet which the mounted players used in the pastime. This old polo-mallet is the root from which have sprung all the clubs, bats, and mallets of croquet, golf, cricket and other similar games. We first hear of pall mall in Europe as a game of Languedoc, where, according to Ducange, it was called "chicane' —a manifest corruption of its Eastern name of "chugan"-though the other provinces, in adopting the pastime, dropped this name and gave it that of "le jeu de mail," under which, some centuries afterwards, it crossed the channel, and became so fashionable in the England of the Stuart Kings. The earliest reference to pall mall we have been able to find in this country is in the papers presented to Norfolk, Sussex, and Sir Ralph Sadler, the Commissioners appointed by Elizabeth in 1568, nominally to inquire into the conduct towards his Queen of the Scotch Regent Murray, but in reality to try Mary, Queen of Scots, for complicity in the murder of Darnley. When, in February 1567, a fortnight after the tragedy in the Kirk o' Field, the Scottish Queen went, by the advice of her Council and physicians, to Seton Castle, she set all the scandal-loving tongues, native and foreign, in her kingdom, a-wagging. Sir William Drury, writing to Cecil from Berwick, regales the Secretary with some of the absurd stories then current, such as that the Queen and Bothwell had been shooting at the butts against Huntley and Seton, for a dinner at Tranent, which the latter had to pay-a story he had afterwards to contradict, and tell Cecil he had been misinformed in regard to the Scottish Queen's proceedings, as she had never stirred from Seton. The undoubted fact that Mary had never "stirred from Seton," however, had only this effect, that it transferred the scene of her 66 shameful diversions" to the grounds of that house. When George Buchanan appeared as one of the counsellors before the Commissioners at York, and afterwards at Westminster, he charged his Queen, in the "Detection" he presented, with going every day into a field near the Castle, accompanied by a great crowd of nobles, to play "ludos consuetos nec eos plane muliebres ;" and, though he does not tell us what those games of the time, which were not quite suitable for ladies, were, luckily another document in the proceedings, written in the vernacular, is more explicit. The Earl of Murray's own Articles" say that for a "few dayes aftir the murthir, remaining at Halyrude hous, she [then] past to Seytoun, exercising hir one day richt oppenlie at the fieldis, with the palmall and goif." It is beside our purpose here to show how it has been conclusively proved that these statements are as false as Drury's shooting story: the charge is chiefly interesting to us because it proves that our game was known in Scotland at this time, even though we may not be able to claim for it the full force of Buchanan's language, and say that it was one of the games in popular use then in Scotland. 66 South of the Tweed, pall mall does not appear to have been played for at least thirty years after the sitting of the Westminster Commission. It can hardly have been introduced in 1598, for in that year Sir Robert Dallington, in his "Method for Travel," extols its merits, and suggests its introduction in these words: "Among all the exercises of France, I prefer none before the paile maille, both because it is a gentlemanlike sport, not violent, and yields good occasion and opportunity of discourse as they walke from one marke to the other. I marvell among many more apish and foolish toys which we 'have brought out of France, that we have not brought this sport also into England." Whether or not it was owing to the traveller's praises, the game was adopted in England very soon after the publication of Dallington's book. It is one of the "fair and pleasant field games" that King James I. recommends to Prince Henry in the "Basilikon Doron ;" and though the King himself does not seem to have been a player at the game, we have abundant evidence that it became very popular at Court during the early years of the seventeenth century. Though Dr. Jeremy Taylor includes pall mall among the games that are "lawful" if played in moderation, and for "refreshment" only, and not for money, it is very doubtful if he saw it played during the gloomy dozen years before the publication of the "Ductor Dubitantium;" but, when the "white rose bloomed again," among the pastimes that returned in the royal train was pall mall. Indeed, the palmy days of the game were from the Restoration to the Revolution. During this quarter-century it was one of the most fashionable of games at Court; at the Restoration pall mall, like the King, got its own again," and though, as we shall see, Dr. Chambers is hardly correct in saying, “it is rather surprising that it should have so entirely gone out, there being no trace of it after the Revolution," undoubtedly the landing of King William deposed the game from a pride of place that had no rival among outdoor sports except, perhaps, tennis. 66 On April 2, 1661, Mr. Secretary Pepys walks "to St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at pall mall, the first time I ever saw the sport." Probably the alley the Duke played on was the new mall King Charles had, among other improvements in the Park, caused to be made in place of the old mall that occupied the site of the street now called after it, Pall Mall. Though this avenue does not appear to have been enclosed as a street till about 1690, even in the time of the Commonwealth it began to be built upon, and Charles immediately after his return had a new mall laid out; which still bears the name then given to it as being the arena of our game. We find many references to the new mall and its frequenters in contemporary writers. Pepys, in September, 1663, falls agossiping with the keeper of the alley, "who was sweeping of it; who told me of what the earth is mixed that do floor the mall, and that over all there is cockle shells powdered, and spread to keep it fast, which, however, in dry weather turns to dust and deadens the ball." We see this smoothness of the alley alluded to by the flatterer Waller, when, in his poem on St. James's Park, he describes the Merry Monarch engaged in this favourite game of his : : Here a well polished mall gives us the joy, To see our Prince his matchless force employ ; As from a smoking culverin 'twere shot. On January 4, 1664, we find the Secretary to the Admiralty again writing about our game. After a visit to the tennis court, where the king is playing, and being driven away in disgust with the behaviour of the Courtiers, whose "open G |