or ('pallamaglio' in Italian,

Middle French Middle French (french: moyen français) is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the 14th to the 16th century. It is a period of transition during which: * the French language became clearly distinguished from t ...

for 'mallet game', or sometimes interpreted as 'straw game') is an ancient outdoor game, originally from

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, which gave rise to numerous modern sports, such as

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the Wor ...

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

and its variations, and

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

. It is a now-obsolete lawn game originating in the Late Middle Ages and mostly played in the

Kingdom of Naples The Kingdom of Naples ( la, Regnum Neapolitanum; it, Regno di Napoli; nap, Regno 'e Napule), also known as the Kingdom of Sicily, was a state that ruled the part of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States between 1282 and 1816. It was ...

and France, surviving in some locales into the 20th century. It is a form of ground billiards, using one or more

ball A ball is a round object (usually spherical, but can sometimes be ovoid) with several uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used f ...

s, a stick with a

mallet A mallet is a tool used for imparting force on another object, often made of rubber or sometimes wood, that is smaller than a maul or beetle, and usually has a relatively large head. The term is descriptive of the overall size and proport ...

-like head, and usually featuring one or more targets such as hoops or holes. ' was ancestral to the games

, palle-malle and

, and (by moving it indoors and playing on a table with smaller equipment), billiards.

History

One of the oldest references to the game of 'pallamaglio', and to its Neapolitan origin, is by

Anton Francesco Grazzini Antonio Francesco Grazzini or Antonfrancisco Grazzini (March 22, 1503February 18, 1584) was an Italian people, Italian author." Biography He was born at Florence or in Staggia Senese (he wrote of himself: Rime di Antonfrancesco detto il Lasca ...

, also known as Lasca. The game is also mentioned in a list of Neapolitan popular games in

Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno (; ; la, Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist. He is known for his cosmologic ...

's comedy The Candlestick (1582). The game was probably already played in the

in the twelfth century. One of the first known written record of ' is a

Renaissance Latin Renaissance Latin is a name given to the distinctive form of Literary Latin style developed during the European Renaissance of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, particularly by the Renaissance humanism movement. Ad fontes ''Ad fontes' ...

text dating to 1416. The in the name probably means ' maul,

', from Latin . An alternative meaning of 'straw' has been suggested ( Modern French ), on the basis that the target hoops used in some versions of the game were sometimes made of bound straw. Quite popular in various forms in the Kingdom of Naples, then in other parts of Italy and France in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the game developed into

pall-mall Pall-mall, paille-maille, palle-maille, pell-mell, or palle-malle (, , ) is a lawn game (though mostly played on earth surfaces rather than grass) that was mostly played in the 16th and 17th centuries, a precursor to croquet. History Related to ...

in the early modern period, which spread to Scotland then England; this, in turn, eventually led to

. According to Brantôme, King Henry II of France (ruled 1547–1559) was an excellent player of and (a form of that eventually developed into tennis and other racquet sports). Louis XIV (ruled 1661–1715), who hated , was on the other hand enthusiastic about , and the playing court in the gardens of Tuileries Palace was enlarged during his reign. The game was still played in France, in the areas of

Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of ...

and

Aix-en-Provence Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...

, into the early 20th century, before the First World War. An educational institution in Montpellier, Collège Jeu de Mail, still bears the name of this game.

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 The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

-like end, similar to a croquet mallet or golf club, respectively; it is essentially a heavy version of the billiard (which 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: * ('quarrel', 'quibble') – similar to

; the winner is the one who reaches a distant goal in the fewest strokes. * ('great blow') – the goal is to launch the ball as far as possible; good players might exceed * ('wheel', modern French: ) – played with several balls; ancestral to croquet and billiards * ('party') – a team version.

References

{{Reflist Ground billiards Sports originating in France