Hi guys, Sunday musings...
I have recently been reading Suzanne Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew series, most of which are read by David Thorpe (a British actor) and a couple by Andrew Wincott (which is disconcerting as they voice the characters differently). However, the reason for this post is that book -
not sure if it is 8, 9 or 10 - has a whole lot on games that were played during the 14th century. The books so far have been set between 1350 and 1355..
It was in book 9: A Killer in Winter, when the whole town and college (Cambridge) turn out to play Camp Ball. At the end of the book in the HISTORICAL NOTES section, these games are mentioned with minimal explanations:
CAMP BALL: basically RUGBY with almost no rules. A leather ball with 2 goals up to miles apart, hundreds of people took part, using hands to move the ball on
KICK BALL: which is camp ball which allows kicking
ICE CAMPING: camp ball played wearing ice skates
ICE BANDY BALL: similar to camp ball using a stick and ball - like HOCKEY
Inside games, SMALL STAKES WHILE DICING WITH BONES - NOT square dice.
HAZZARD - straight forward throwing game.
RAFFLE: uses 3 dice with the aim of scoring higher than your opponent - in the book they gambled with suckets and marchpanes.
CROSS & PILE: similar to heads & tails (in Australia called Two-Up?)
QUEEK: players take turns rolling pebbles across a chequer board with bets placed on whether they would land on a light or dark square.
BACKGAMMON
CHESS
MERRELS
Card games were introduced in the 15th century...
It is CHAPTER 15: about half way through the discussion on things 14th century people did to celebrate Christmas.
Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
