1619.1

Bawdy Poem Has Wenches Playing "With Stoole and Ball"

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	FemalesFemales
Location
City/State/Country:	[[{{{Country}}}]]
Modern Address
Game	StoolballStoolball
Immediacy of Report
Age of Players
Holiday
Notables
Text	"It was the day of all dayes in the yeare/That unto Bacchus hath its dedication,/ . . . / When country wenches play with stoole and ball,/And run at Barley-breake until they fall:/And country lads fall on them, in such sort/That after forty weekes the[sic] rew the sport." Anonymous, Pasquils Palinodia, and His Progress to the Taverne; Where, After the Survey of the Sellar, You Are Presented with a Pleasant Pynte of Poeticall Sherry [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 169, who credits Henderson, page 74. Block notes that "Barley-Break" [not a ball game] was, like stoole ball, traditionally a spring courtship ritual in the English countryside.
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