Beorn
03-01-2009, 09:14 PM
'Cricket was invented in continental Europe,' claims Australian academic
Since the claim is made by an Australian, English cricket lovers will take it with a pinch of salt.
But the story goes that the summer game is a foreign invention.
Paul Campbell, an academic from Canberra, says he has evidence that immigrants from Flanders - today's Belgium, France and Holland - brought the game to England in the 14th century.
Cricket has always been assumed to have evolved from children's games played in England since Anglo-Saxon times (between 449 and 1066).
However Mr Campbell, from the department of English and theatre at the Australian National University, says he has the evidence in writing.
He points to a 1533 poem attributed to John Skelton, a poet and playwright, named The Image of Ipocrisie.
In it Skelton criticised the Flemish weavers who set up home in the South and East of England in the 1300s.
He wrote: 'O lorde of Ipocrites, Now shut vpp your wickettes, And clape to your clickettes, A! Farewell, kings of crekettes!'
Mr Campbell unearthed the poem as he searched archives looking for different spellings of the word cricket. Deeper research revealed that the weavers played the game on fields close to where they watched over their sheep. They used their curved shepherd's crooks as bats.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/01/article-1158291-03B674F9000005DC-407_468x286.jpg
The word cricket has its roots in a Flemish phrase which means to 'chase with a curved stick'.
This has given rise to further suggestions that both cricket and hockey were copies of games of chivalry in which a knight on horseback guarded a narrow passageway.
The first written reference to the hallowed game was thought to be in 1589 when a former pupil at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, Surrey, recalled how he and his classmates 'did runne and play there at creckett and other plaies'.
John Eddowes, an authority on English cricket, says the Skelton poem is 'extremely significant' in backing up the theory that the sport was imported by Flemish immigrants.
Weavers, he explains, were the aristocrats of labour, having the leisure time to play sports.
'They brought their games with them when English kings invited them in from at least 1331 to improve the quality of English woollen exports.'
He agreed the reference to 'wickettes' was evidence that cricket was being referred to and that it was being played after the Flemish arrived.
Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158291/Cricket-invented-continental-Europe-claims-Australian-academic.html)
It's not of a great concern really. As with all things in this world not invented by the English - and there isn't much that we haven't ;) - we took what was played by mere simpletons and turned it into the great game it is now.
To think, without the English brilliance, the game would still be being played by men with atrocious spelling skills and equally poor hygiene.
Since the claim is made by an Australian, English cricket lovers will take it with a pinch of salt.
But the story goes that the summer game is a foreign invention.
Paul Campbell, an academic from Canberra, says he has evidence that immigrants from Flanders - today's Belgium, France and Holland - brought the game to England in the 14th century.
Cricket has always been assumed to have evolved from children's games played in England since Anglo-Saxon times (between 449 and 1066).
However Mr Campbell, from the department of English and theatre at the Australian National University, says he has the evidence in writing.
He points to a 1533 poem attributed to John Skelton, a poet and playwright, named The Image of Ipocrisie.
In it Skelton criticised the Flemish weavers who set up home in the South and East of England in the 1300s.
He wrote: 'O lorde of Ipocrites, Now shut vpp your wickettes, And clape to your clickettes, A! Farewell, kings of crekettes!'
Mr Campbell unearthed the poem as he searched archives looking for different spellings of the word cricket. Deeper research revealed that the weavers played the game on fields close to where they watched over their sheep. They used their curved shepherd's crooks as bats.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/01/article-1158291-03B674F9000005DC-407_468x286.jpg
The word cricket has its roots in a Flemish phrase which means to 'chase with a curved stick'.
This has given rise to further suggestions that both cricket and hockey were copies of games of chivalry in which a knight on horseback guarded a narrow passageway.
The first written reference to the hallowed game was thought to be in 1589 when a former pupil at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, Surrey, recalled how he and his classmates 'did runne and play there at creckett and other plaies'.
John Eddowes, an authority on English cricket, says the Skelton poem is 'extremely significant' in backing up the theory that the sport was imported by Flemish immigrants.
Weavers, he explains, were the aristocrats of labour, having the leisure time to play sports.
'They brought their games with them when English kings invited them in from at least 1331 to improve the quality of English woollen exports.'
He agreed the reference to 'wickettes' was evidence that cricket was being referred to and that it was being played after the Flemish arrived.
Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158291/Cricket-invented-continental-Europe-claims-Australian-academic.html)
It's not of a great concern really. As with all things in this world not invented by the English - and there isn't much that we haven't ;) - we took what was played by mere simpletons and turned it into the great game it is now.
To think, without the English brilliance, the game would still be being played by men with atrocious spelling skills and equally poor hygiene.