1818.6

Scots Ballplaying Variants -- Including 'Ba'-baises' -- Found to the North

Salience	Peripheral
Tags	English Base BallEnglish Base Ball
Location
City/State/Country:	Scotland
Modern Address
Game	Ba'-baisesBa'-baises
Immediacy of Report	Contemporary
Age of Players	YouthYouth
Holiday
Notables
Text	"Neither Hadrian's Wall nor the Scottish border hampered the northward propagation of games resembling tut-ball and pize-ball. . . . schoolchildren in Scotland from the Borders area up to the Highlands occasionally played the original English baseball. However, in certain regions a mishmash of homegrown variations were more the norm. The historical record of these pastimes is often confused, with sources contradicting each other in describing them, making the task of detecting their precise nature a bit of a challenge. Many of their names are derivative of the term bases. For example, the 1818 Dictionary of the Scottish Language defined the word ba'-baises as 'the name of a particular game at ball.' . . . That transforms "ba'-baises' into "ball-bases,' which is essentially baseball backwards."
Sources	David Block, Pastime Lost (U Nebraska, 2019), pp 186-187.
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External Number
Submitted by	David Block
Submission Note	Email of 9/16/2020
Has Supplemental Text

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