236 ANCIENT SUSSEX GAME OF STOOLBALL 



allusion to it occurs in 1740 in " Poor Robin's 

 Almanack " : 



" Now milkmaid's pails are deckt with flowers, 

 And men begin to drink in bowers 

 Sweet Sillabubs, and lip-loved tansey, 

 Whilst hob-nail Dick and simp' ring Frances 

 Trip it away in country dances ; 

 At stoolball and at barley-break, 

 Wherewith they harmless pastime make." 



Games of ball are all much alike if we go by 

 descriptions given of them in old books, and it is 

 difficult to make out exactly the difference between 

 "stowball," "stoolball," and " bittle-battle," but 

 it seems probable that the first is a kind of golf 

 and that the two last denote what was no doubt 

 the ancestor of cricket, handed down in a some- 

 what altered form to the Sussex women of to-day. 



There are undoubted references to games like 

 these, and closely allied to hockey, in the " Tain bo 

 Cnailgne," an Irish epic which was written down 

 in the seventh century and often transcribed until 

 the eleventh century ; but the most definite details 

 about stoolball are found in Dr. Johnson's Dic- 

 tionary. He says : " It is a play where balls are 

 driven from stool to stool." 



A tradition exists that it was originally played 

 by milkmaids using their milking-stools as bats, 

 but the name of " bittle-battle," which is also 

 given to the game, leads one to think that these 

 young women used their " bittles " or wooden 

 milking-bowls as bats, and that the milking stool 

 was the wicket. This might account for the 



