1672c.2

From Protoball
Revision as of 05:15, 2 July 2022 by Larry (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Chronologies
Scroll.png

Prominent Milestones

Misc BB Firsts
Add a Misc BB First

About the Chronology
Tom Altherr Dedication

Add a Chronology Entry
Open Queries
Open Numbers
Most Aged

Francis Willughby's "Book of Games" Surveys Folkways: Batting/Baserunning Game Described

Salience Prominent
Game Stoolball, Horne-Billets, Kit-Cat, Tutball
Age of Players Unknown
Text

Warwickshire scientist Francis Willughby (1635-1672) compiled, in manuscript form, descriptions of over 130 games, including, stoolball, hornebillets, kit-cat, stowball, and tutball [but not cricket, trapball or rounders]. He died at 36 and the incomplete manuscript, long held privately, became known to researchers in the 1990s and was published in 2003.

Willughby described stoolball as a game in which a team of players defended an overturned stool with their hands.

Hornebillets, unlike stoolball and early cat games, involved using a bat, and also base-running [between holes placed 7 or 8 yards apart], but it used no ball - a cat was used as the batted object. A runner [running was compulsory, even for short hits] had to place his staff in a hole before the other team could put the cat in that hole. The number of holes depended on the number of players available.

Stowball appears as a golf-like game.

Kit Cat is described as a sort of fungo game in which the cats can be propelled 60 yards or more.

 

Sources

David Cram, Jeffrey L. Forgeng, and Dorothy Johnston, Francis Willughby's Book of Games: A Seventeenth Century Treatise on Sports, Games, and Pastimes [Ashgate Publishing, 2003].

See also L. McCray, "The Amazing Francis Willughby, and the Role of Stoolball in the Evolution of Baseball and Cricket," in Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Volume 5, number 1 (Spring 2011), pages 17-20.

Comment Edit with form to add a comment
Query Edit with form to add a query



Comments

<comments voting="Plus" />