Jeu de mail
Jeu de mail or jeu de maille (Middle French: 'mallet game', or sometimes interpreted as 'straw game') is a now-obsolete lawn game originating in the 15th century and mostly played in France,[1] surviving in some locales into the 20th century. It is a form of ground billiards, using one or more balls, a stick with a mallet-like head, and usually featuring one or more targets such as hoops or holes. Jeu de mail was ancestral to the games pall-mall and croquet.
History
The first written record of jeu de mail is a Renaissance Latin text dating to 1416.[2]:306 The mail in the name probably means 'maul, mallet', from Latin malleus. An alternative meaning of "straw" has been suggested (Modern French maille), on the basis that the target hoops used in some versions of the game were sometimes made of bound straw.[2]:308
Quite popular in various forms in France and Italy in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the game developed into paille-maille in the early modern period, which spread to Scotland then England, and eventually led to croquet.[2]:308
According to Brantôme, King Henry II of France (ruled 1547–1559) was an excellent player of jeu de mail and jeu de paume (a form of handball that eventually developed into tennis and other raquet sports). Louis XIV (ruled 1661–1715), who hated jeu de paume, was on the other hand enthusiastic about jeu de mail, and the playing court in the gardens of Tuileries Palace was enlarged during his reign.[3]
The game was still played in France, in the areas of Montpellier and Aix-en-Provence, into the early 20th century, before the First World War.[3] A college in Montpellier still bears the name of this game (College Jeu de Mail).
Game play
The game makes use of one or more balls that are generally of boxwood, but higher-quality balls are of medlar. The ball is struck with a long stick with a mallet- or foot-like end, similar to a croquet mallet or golf club, respectively (essentially a heavy version of the billiard mace that eventually developed into the cue stick). Different variants of the game may have differing goals or targets (if any), ranging from croquet-like hoops to golf-like holes in the ground. There are four known named rules variations of the game:[1]
- Chicane ('quarrel') – similar to golf; the winner is the one who reaches a distant goal in the fewest strokes.
- Grand coup ('great blow') – the goal is to launch the ball as far as possible; good players can exceed 200 yards.
- Rouët ('wheel') – played with several balls.
- Partie ('party') – a team version.
References
- 1 2 Liponski, Wojciech (2005 [orig. 2003]). L'encyclopédie des sports (French ed.). Paris: Atena. p. 256. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - 1 2 3 Jusserand, J. J. (1901 [reprinted 1996]). Les sports et jeux d'exercice dans l'ancienne France. Paris: self-published. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - 1 2 Merdrignac, Bernard (2002). Le sport au Moyen Âge. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. p. 236.