Bowling green

“ These excrescences should surely be removed and the dead left to their quiet insignificance. On the outside, underneath a lofty wall, a pleasant bowling-green has been laid out for public enjoyment, with flower borders running round. ”

“ Who ever learnt a Scotch song out of books? They are possessed of souls, these songs, to be caught only from living lips. The bodies alone are to be found within the bars.
Passing Bolton we saw the first bowling green, sure proof that we are getting northward, where every village has its green and its bowling club, the ancient game of bowls still offering to rural England attractions paramount to more modern sports. ”

“ He had likewise a tennis-court and bowling green at Whitehall, where at noonday and towards eve, blithe lords, and ladies in brave apparel, might be seen at play. Bowling was a game to which the people were much devoted, every suburban tavern having its green, where good friends and honest neighbours challenged each other's strength and skill. And amongst other pleasant sports and customs were those practised on May-day, when maids rose betimes to bathe their faces in dew, that they might become sweet-complexioned to men's sight ”

“ In Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere in Scotland, and in London (through the county council) , Newcastle and other English towns, the corporations have laid down greens in public parks and open spaces. In Scotland the public greens are self-supporting, from a charge, which includes the use of bowls, of one penny an hour for each player; in London the upkeep of the greens falls on the rates, but players must provide their own bowls.
There are two kinds of bowling green, the level and the crown. The crown has a fall which may amount to as much as 18 in. all round from the centre to the sides. ”

“ An annual bowling-match was formerly held on feasten Monday, between Paul and Mousehole men (Mousehole is a fishing village in the same parish) ; the last of them took place sixty years ago. Up to that time the bowling-green, an artificially raised piece of ground, was kept in order by the parishioners. No one in the neighbourhood now knows the game; the church schools are built on a part of the site, and the remainder is the village playground. ”

“ Of bowling-green, a green on which to roll a ball, the French have made boulingrin. Folks have this green inside their houses nowadays, only it is put on the table, is a cloth instead of turf, and is called billiards.
It is difficult to see why, having boulevard (boulevert) , which is the same word as bowling-green, the French should have adopted boulingrin. It is surprising that anything as sensible as the Dictionary should indulge in useless luxuries. ”

“ I found a fine bowling-green in the rear, and during the course of the evening some of the townsfolk forgathered there and played bowls quite seriously over their pipes and their ale. It may not be high art, but I noticed there was an art in playing bowls, and the old men who knew and studied it appeared mostly to win. A good old-fashioned game is bowls, that never seems wholly to go out of fashion, and a pleasant one to watch ”

“ Some call this game Dutch-rubbers.
Bowling, according to an author in the seventeenth century, is a pastime "in which a man shall find great art in choosing out his ground, and preventing the winding, hanging, and many turning advantages of the same, whether it be in open wilde places, or in close allies; and for his sport, the chusing of the bowle is the greatest cunning; your flat bowles being best for allies, your round byazed bowles for open grounds of advantage, and your round bowles, like a ball, for green swarthes that are plain and level." ”

“ Green considered the bowling-alleys and billiard rooms as the very bane of the city—leading men on step by step to the vices of gambling and drunkenness. Mr. Green stated that he had never met with a gambler in his life, who played honestly, and got his living by playing cards honestly—for all he had ever known would take advantage, sometimes—which perhaps the world might call cheating. ”

“ One harmless diversion should not be passed over. 'At Epsom Old Wells ... on Whitsun Tuesday will be Moris Dancing Set against Set, for Lac'd Hats, at 10 a Clock, with other Diversions.'
But the game, par excellence, which combined out-of-door sport with the minimum of fatigue, suitable alike to the mercurial young, and the steady middle-aged, was bowling; and the bowling greens multiplied exceedingly in this reign, especially (judging by the advertisements) after 1706. ”

“ He had never been disposed to conceal any of his wicked acts while one of the profession. There was one point on which all gamblers were unprincipled; they would play and win money of men they knew were totally ignorant of the arts of card-playing. This was a fraud—it was dishonest; a strong argument against the whole band, good or bad.
Mr. Green denounced bowling-alleys and billiard saloons. He then exposed the tricks by which gamblers cheated, and in doing so interested the audience very much.
Freeman's rejoinder was still to the end that some gamblers were honest and honourable. ”

“ Such honest men good bowlers are
Whose own true bias cutts the way.
In the three delineations just represented, we may observe that the players have only one bowl for each person: the modern bowlers have usually three or four.
II.—BOWLING-GREENS FIRST MADE BY THE ENGLISH.
Bowling-greens are said to have originated in England; [829] and bowling upon them, in my memory, was a very popular amusement. In most country towns of any note they are to be found, and some few are still remaining in the vicinity of the metropolis ”

“ The boy at the head of the line takes the bowl, blows a bubble, and drops it on the table. The girl opposite tries to fan it under the arch before it breaks. Tally is kept with pink and blue paper disks on little tally cards which may be attached to the fans. Pink means a successful bowling; blue, a failure. As each two players complete their trial, they go to the foot of the line, which moves up to let the next two try. The game may consist of five rounds, or four if there are many players. A ribbon-bedecked pipe and a pretty fan might be the rewards given to the winning bowlers. ”

“ An injudicious and talkative batsman often materially assists a bowler by such remarks as, ‘I can’t see your bowling a little bit. When tossed high in the air that beastly tree is right behind;’ or, ‘When you bowl over the wicket the ball gets right in a line with the dark windows of the pavilion, and I can’t see it at all.’ Can anyone imagine for a moment that a bowler will not do his very best instantly to make the most of the dark branches of the tree or the windows of the pavilion? ”

“ There is the fortitude which sustains the bowler as he finds his best efforts fail in making an impression upon the wicket, and teaches him to persevere with a heart that is still composed and undaunted. He in truth calms the flutter which will occasionally seize him at such a time; and despite the conviction painfully forced upon him again and again, that his bowling has been mastered, he still manfully endeavours, and frequently succeeds, in pitching the ball on the one spot which above all others serves to afford a crucial test of his opponent's mettle and prowess. ”

“ When that celebrated company of cricketers, dressed in frock-coats and tall hats, whose portraits adorn many a pavilion, competed for the honour of All England, they were quite ignorant of "round-arm" bowling, which is, of course, an invention of modern times. ”

“ So fast bowlers pound the ball down, very short, very fast, with the hand as high as nature will allow, to get the batsman caught behind the wicket; but the ball is nothing more nor less than a long hop, and to bowl a series of long hops is not bowling, according to all well-established canons of the art. In the same way slow bowlers, in endeavouring to get as much twist on the ball as possible, have sacrificed all length and precision, and in some cases are driven to bowl outrageous bad balls in order to tempt an Abel or a Noble to hit the ball up. ”

“ This state of things has driven bowlers to other expedients. They bowl in a great many cases beyond their strength so as to produce fast balls and length, and the science of the art is thereby lost. To bang down long hops for the purpose of terrifying batsmen and in the hope of getting the ball to bump and the batsmen to be caught behind the wicket, is not bowling in the true sense. ”

“ But to the historian there is a picturesque side, and many of us can remember something of the same sort of match in the south of England on the village greens, when the spectators used to sit smoking churchwarden pipes, with beer in china jugs on small round tables, and when many a match used to be finished in one day.
William Lillywhite and Broadbridge, as I have said, brought in round-arm bowling; and with no heavy rollers or mowing machines invented, I should think it probable that many bowlers were successful who were nevertheless not possessed of great skill. ”

“ On crown-greens it is customary to use a small biased wooden jack to give the bowler some clue to the run of the green. The bowler delivers his bowl with one foot on a mat or footer, made of india-rubber or cocoa-nut fibre, the size of which is also prescribed by rule as 24 by 16 in., though, with a view to protecting the green, Australasian clubs employ a much larger size, and require the bowler to keep both feet on the mat in the act of delivery. ”

“ There is one species of ball which we have not discussed, deadly as it is, both in fast and slow bowling. This is the ball which, after the pitch, never rises, but shoots along the surface of the ground, and is commonly called a 'shooter.' The reason why no notice was taken of this when the different kinds of ball which may be bowled were being dealt with is because no amount of practice or skill can enable a bowler to bowl thus. It depends for existence upon inequalities in the ground. ”

“ It is true we have no bowling, in the modern sense of the term, but it's quite good enough for the Bachelors. At one end I put on our village umpire, who bowls fast straight underhand, literally "daisy-cutters," and at the other a newly-married groom, just come into the parish, whose methods are precisely the same. Scoring is out of the question. You may stop the ball as long as your patience lasts, but you can't get it away, and wicket after wicket falls, as the pick of my village eleven try in vain to turn fast sneaks into slow half-volleys. ”

“ The best states of the ground for this bowling, as indeed for most, are when the ground has been hard and fast, and has since become crumbly and covered with loose bits of grass and worn turf, and when there has been heavy rain to saturate the ground which is being rapidly dried and caked by a hot sun. In the former state the ball takes plenty of twist, and also leaves the ground very quickly, in addition to sometimes getting up uncomfortably high for the batsman. ”

“ In the score, the strike counts ten for the player and in addition also whatever he gets on the next two balls. Likewise he will count ten for a spare, but only what he gets on one ball for a bonus. As a consequence the maximum or perfect score in bowling is 300, which is a series of ten strikes and two more attempts in which he knocks down all the pins. In lawn bowling the scores are very low as compared with the indoor game, where good players will often average close to 200 on alleys where they are accustomed to bowl. ”

“ The Treasure only consented to play after much pressure. He said:
“You know what the wicket is like; it’s simply mountainous, [Pg 514] and black men have no control over their bowling. For you medium-sized chaps it may be comparatively safe, but bowling at me is like bowling at a haystack—you cannot miss. When I go in, the blacks never bother about the stumps, but just let fly at random on the chance of winging me. Last match here, I hit their crack fast bowler all over the island, and he got mad at last, and gave up attempting to bowl me, but just tried to kill me.” ”

“ The work, without doubt, is hard, the labour of the day strenuous, but the pleasure of bowling a length with the wicket a bit in your favour, with a side that are trying to field, and not loafing as “little mounds of earth or waxen figures in a third-rate tailor’s shop,” is a goodly thing, a thing to dream of. And this craft of bowling is so sure, so certain. ”

“ The bowl of soapsuds is placed upon a small stand by the side of the bowling-table, and the next in rank to the captain, belonging to same party, dips his pipe into the suds and blows a bubble, not too large, which he then tosses upon the table in front of the captain, who as first bowler, stands ready to blow the bubble on its course down through the goal. Three successive trials are allowed each player; the bubbles which break before the bowler has started them, are not counted. ”

“ He is a cautious player, the man at this end, and the bowling is straight and well pitched.
After five balls, a man who has been standing by the bowler with his coat on, and seeming to take no interest in the game, turns his back on the bowler and batsman, and strolls off as if tired of looking on. Then the fielders seem to be playing at "pussy wants a corner," for they walk about and change places, and then another man begins to bowl from the other wicket. ”

“ A really fine slice at the fifteenth will take us comfortably on to the green—but it is the fourteenth green, and, choose we never so wisely the spot on which to drop our ball, there still remains a hedge to negotiate: it is not an easy green to approach—if you elect to play short of the green and run on, your ball stops dead; while if you play a nice, firm shot on to the green, it invariably abandons all idea of being a pitch at all, and suddenly converts itself into a magnificent running approach and careers gaily right across the green towards the ninth flag. ”