Still another kind of play belonging to this class (and at this point
all connection with fighting play is severed) consists in rolling or
throwing the projectile into or through a hole. The familiar game of
marbles with holes was known to Greek children, and was called τρόπα.
The same principle, too, is employed in the old-fashioned billiards
in those games requiring a ring into which the ball is rolled. For
other games the ring is made on the ground, as in this described by
Nordenskiöld: “Several stand in a circle and take turns at throwing a
short tapering iron rod, the object being to cause the iron to fall on
its sharp end within the circle and stand upright.”[266] In croquet
the balls must roll through wickets. Throwing balls through the open
mouth of a figure carved in wood was a mediæval diversion, and Eneas
Silvius wrote in 1438 that the youths of Basel hung an iron ring on
their playground and amused themselves with batting balls through
it.[267] In Genf, little metal balls were tossed through holes bored in
the head of a cask.[268] We have a classic description of such a game
in Storm’s Schimmel-reiter, where Hauke Haien wins the victory under
the eyes of his beloved: “Then it flew like lightning to Hauke’s arms.
He stooped a little, turning the ball two or three times in his hand,
and as he took aim deathlike silence reigned. All eyes followed the
flying ball as it hummed along, cutting the air. Suddenly, far away,
the silvery wings of a seagull gleamed, and her thrilling cry sounded
from the dikes, but in the same instant the ball crashed into the
cask, and all the people cried out ‘Hurrah for Hauke!’ while the word
ran through the crowd, ‘Hauke Haien has won the game.’ But he, as they
all crowded toward him, reached out for but one hand. She cried, ‘What
is the matter, Hauke? The ball is in the cask!’ He only nodded, and did
not stir from the spot. It was not till he felt the little hand fast
clasped in his own that he spoke. ‘You must be right,’ he said, ‘I do
believe I have won.’” Finally, I will recall Ulysses’s marvellous feat
in the presence of the drunken suitors, when on his return home he sent
an arrow through the ears of twelve oxen standing in a row.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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