1853.7
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Didactic Novel Pairs "Bass-Ball" and Rounders at Youths' Outing
| Salience | |
|---|---|
| Tags | Females, FictionFemales, Fiction |
| Location | |
| City/State/Country: | [[{{{Country}}}]] |
| Modern Address | |
| Game | RoundersRounders |
| Immediacy of Report | |
| Age of Players | |
| Holiday | |
| Notables | |
| Text | "The rest of the party strolled about the field, or joined merrily in a game of bass-ball or rounders, or sat in the bower, listening to the song of birds." A Year of Country Life: or, the Chronicle of the Young Naturalists (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1853), page 115. Provided by Richard Hershberger, 1/30/2008. As a way of teaching nature [each chapter introduces several birds, insects, and "wild plants"] this book follows a group of boys and girls of unspecified age [seriously pre-pubescent, we think] through a calendar year. The bass-ball/rounders reference above is one of the few times we run across both terms in a contemporary writing. So, now: are there two distinct games or just two distinct names for the same game? Well, Murphy's Law, meet origins research: the syntax here leaves that muddy, as it could be the former answer if the children played bass-ball and rounders separately that [June] day. Richard's take: "It is possible that there were two games the party played . . . but the likelier interpretation is that this was one game, with both names given to ensure clarity." David Block [email of 2/27/2008] agrees with Richard. Richard also says "It is possible that as the English dialect moved from "base ball" to "rounders," English society concurrently moved from the game being played primarily played by boys and only sometimes being played by girls. I am not qualified to say. [Note: Protoball will review its evidence on that in version 11 of the Chronology.] Trap-ball receives one uninformative mention in the book [Ibid, page 211], and, perhaps being seen as a more central tenet of Christian knowledge, cricket receives three references [Ibid, pages 75, 110, and 211]. The first of these, unlike the bass-ball account, separates English boys from English girls after a May tea party: "Some of the gentlemen offered prizes of bats and balls, and skipping-ropes, for feats of activity or skill in running, leaping, playing cricket, &c. with the boys; and skipping, and battledore and shuttlecock with the girls." [Note: If you insist on using the number of references as a yardstick of approved knowledge, you will want to know that "tea" receives 12 mentions.] |
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1853. Didactic Novel Pairs "Bass-Ball" and Rounders at Youths' Outing"
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