Skittles

It was a very pleasant evening we had at the Mead End playing skittles. St. Georges Ladies Group had organised the evening - an open evening so that men folk could join in the fun. There must have been about six of us lesser mortals, all with one desire - to show the ladies exactly how to do it. With my usual dexterity and skill I managed to win a prize - the Wooden Spoon. Which only goes to show that skittles, as far as I am concerned, is a game of chance rather than skill.

I have always believed that skittles is a very old game, but exactly how old I wasn't sure. Did the Ancient Greeks play it- Or the Romans- I just don't know. They probably had something like it. Archaeologists have discovered bowling balls, pins and other equipment in an Egyptian child's grave dating back to 5200 B.C. So the Egyptians were playing a form of bowling centuries ago. There is evidence to show that in Germany, back in A.D. 200, village dances and celebrations included a similar form of the game - they rolled stones at nine wooden clubs. In the 3rd or 4th century German monks played a game with a 'kegel', which was a club carried for self defence. In the game, the kegel, representing a sin or temptation, was stood on end and the monks would throw stones at it until they knocked it over. The modern German term for skittles is Kegelen, so it must be true.

Skittles, or Nine Pins, has long been played in the pubs and inns of England. It was recorded in England as early as the 1100s. In general, players take turns to throw wooden balls down a lane, at the end of which are several wooden skittles, in an attempt to knock them all over. There are a number of different games across England and there have been many more in the past. There are two 14th century manuscripts which show a game called Club Kayles (from the French "quilles" or skittles). These depict a game in which one skittle is bigger, differently shaped, and positioned so as to be the most difficult to knock over.  In the pictures, the throwers are about to launch a long club-like object at the skittles underarm. The large skittle is presumably a king pin as featured in some of the modern versions of skittles, a pin which has different attributes to the others. The fact that the thrower is not using a ball is not at all unusual - the Skittles cousin, Aunt Sally, still uses a baton shaped stick to throw at the doll and many modern games use an object called a 'cheese' instead of a ball, a cheese being any lump which is thrown down the alley at the skittles, and its shape can vary from barrel shaped to, well, cheese shaped.

There are several different forms of the game, but they all feature projectiles being propelled from one end of an alley in an effort to knock down nine pins stood in a diamond-shaped arrangement at the other end. That is about all that many of the games do have in common, as over the years, regional variations in the size and shape of the pins and of the balls or cheeses, the length of the alley and the use of a kingpin have developed, and the rules began to vary quite radically across England. One of the most marked divisions is in the method for actually throwing the balls or cheeses.  In London, the heavy cheese is flung full toss directly at the skittles. Over in the West Country, balls are rolled down the full length of the alley while in the Midlands the Long Alley game usually requires the cheese or ball to bounce once before hitting the skittles ™ and this on an alley 36 feet long. The game we play in this area is the West Country version. This is actually the most basic version, and hence the most popular, version of skittles wherein 9 pins are arranged in a diamond at the end of an alley around 24 feet long. Each turn starts with all the skittles standing and consists of three throws down the alley.  If all the pins are knocked down, then they are all reset.  So the maximum score in one turn is 27.  In one variation of the game, if all nine pins are scattered, only the centre pin is replaced. This reduces the maximum score to eleven.

Skittles has also been played in the Netherlands as long as it has in England, if not longer, and it was the Dutch who introduced the sport to America in the 1600s - it was called Dutch pins. The section of what is now New York City where Dutch residents bowled is still known as 'Bowling Green'. In America the game became very popular. But people began to gamble on the sport, and for a while it was looked on as an evil thing. The state of Connecticut took a dim view of these activities, and outlawed 'bowling at nine pins'. The authorities should have known better than to be so precise in the wording. To get around that law, residents added an additional pin and rearranged the pins into a 1-2-3-4 triangle. So 10-pin bowling was born. By the mid-1900s, the sport was once again an accepted form of family recreation.

Bill Hutchings