Page:The Cricket Field (1854).djvu/33

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ORIGIN OF THE GAME.
9

was played in Scotland about 1700, under the name of "Cat and Dog."

Fourthly, that "Creag,"—very near "Cricce," the Saxon term for the crooked stick, or bandy, which we see in the old pictures of cricket,—was the name of a game played in the year 1300.

First, as to a single-wicket game in the thirteenth century, whatever the name of the said game might have been, we are quite satisfied with the following proof:—

"In the Bodleian Library at Oxford," says Strutt, "is a MS. (No. 264.) dated 1344, which represents a figure, a female, in the act of bowling a ball (of the size of a modern cricket-ball) to a man who elevates a straight bat to strike it; behind the bowler are several figures, male and female, waiting to stop or catch the ball, their attitudes grotesquely eager for a 'chance.' The game is called Club-ball, but the score is made by hitting and running, as in cricket."

Secondly, Barrington, in his "Remarks on the More Ancient Statutes," comments on 17 Edw. IV. A.D. 1477, thus:—

"The disciplined soldiers were not only guilty of pilfering on their return, but also of the vice of gaming. The third chapter therefore forbids playing at cloish, ragle, half-bowle, quekeborde, handyn and handoute. Whosoever shall permit these games to be played in their house or yard