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 and France, surviving in some locales into the 20th century. It is a form of ground billiards, using one or more balls, a stick with a mallet-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), Cue sports, billiards.

History

One of the oldest references to the game of 'pallamaglio', and to its Neapolitan origin, is by Antonio Francesco Grazzini, Anton Francesco Grazzini, also known as Lasca. The game is also mentioned in a list of Neapolitan popular games in Giordano Bruno's comedy The Candlestick (1582). The game was probably already played in the Kingdom of Naples in the twelfth century. One of the first known written record of ' is a Renaissance Latin text dating to 1416. The in the name probably means 'Post maul, maul, mallet', from Latin language, 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 in the early modern period, which spread to Scotland then England; this, in turn, eventually led to

. According to Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, 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 of France, 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 and Aix-en-Provence, 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 Buxus sempervirens, boxwood, but higher-quality balls are of medlar. The ball is struck with a long stick with a mallet- or foot-like end, similar to a croquet mallet or Golf club (equipment), golf club, respectively; it is essentially a heavy version of the Cue sports, 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