58 MR HARDY ON BOWLING. 



of people by law prohibited, hmvlingt^* — this being directed against 

 the injurious and gambling practices in bowling-greens and bowling- 

 alleys, which had at that period become the common resort of the dis- 

 solute and idle.f Casting of stones, says Brand, " is a Welsh custom, 

 practised as they throw the blacksmith's stone in some parts of England. 

 There is a similar game in the north of England called long-bullets. 

 The prize is to him who throws the ball farthest at the fewest throws." J 

 In the west of Scotland, bowling with cast-iron bowls, was a very com- 

 mon exercise, till the increased traffic on the roads, and the insinuation 

 of a new tone of manners, made it necessary to relinquish it. In the 

 eastern district of Berwickshire the game was called bowls or bullets, 

 and the parties who kept it up were chiefly the farmers. The princi- 

 pal games took place when amateurs from one part of the county, such 

 as Coldingham, by challenging or bragging those of the vicinity of 

 Cockburnspath, provoked a vigorous competition. A set of bowls con- 

 sisted of four, made of cast-iron, four parties being engaged on one side 

 to tlirow in turn, while an equal number opposed. The bowls were 

 sometimes thrown by raising the arm as a stone is cast, but more fre- 

 quently they were propelled in the hainshing mode. The hails, or 

 boundaries of the game, were the now obsolete fishing hamlet of Ilead- 



* Here I have only supposed a case. I have since met with almost precisely the 

 mistake which I imagined ought to be guarded against. It occurs in the Parochial 

 History and Antiquities of Stockton-upon-Tees, by the Rev. John Brewster, M. A. 

 2d ed. Stockton, 1829. — The common within the township of Stockton was divided 

 according to an award decreed in the Court of Chancery at Durham, Sept. 8, 1662. 

 The Saltholme was appointed to be equally parted between John Jesson, Esq., and 

 Thomas Harperly, excepting one acre of land, with Mr Jesson 's consent, more to the 

 share of the latter, " in consideration that the said Thomas Harperly and his heirs 

 and assigns, shall for ever thereafter permit any that hath a mind to bowl on the 

 usual accustomed place in the Saltholme within the said Thomas Harperly 's allot- 

 ment there. " Upon this the historian of Stockton remarks, " I am sorry that I 

 cannot, in justice to Mr Jesson's good intentions, point out the spot where the hoivling- 

 green formerly was. No traces of it are known at present, nor is there any tradi- 

 tion that I can discover which retains the least remembrance that such a place ever 

 existed." There can, I think, be little doubt that it never did exist, and that the 

 hitherto almost imnoticed pastime of long-bullets, as Brand terms it, is referred to 

 here, on which the circumstance of the common's becoming private property, was 

 almost certain to lay an embargo. 



t This information is derived from Strati's Sports and Pastimes of the people of 

 England. 



\ Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 286, 4to. 



