These days we’re all used to the idea of gardens, exercise and sport as being good for our health and well being but I recently discovered the same thing had been recognised over 200 years ago when I found a book containing “A Collection of Sociable Garden Games and Rural Amusements involving physical exercise, particularly recommended for people whose occupations require them to sit for long periods, and entirely in accordance with Hufeland’s system of preserving health through exercise and good spirits.”

The editor wrote that his  “intention in compiling it was to provide cheerful and lively parties in the country and in gardens with material for pleasant and useful entertainment, and to give them an opportunity to exercise their physical powers and, through moderate exercise, to restore in the most beneficial manner the health which has been impaired by the sedentary way of life in towns….and that  given the affection which the nobler and higher classes of the population are increasingly developing for country life, I flatter myself that this collection of games will receive a favourable reception.”

I’m not sure though how well it would go down today with the “nobler and higher classes”, or indeed anybody else!

 

The book is originally in German:  Sammlung von gesellschaftlichen Gartenspielen und ländlichen Vergnügungen, die mit Leibesbewegung verbunden. The images come from there unless otherwise acknowledged. 

The Hufeland’s system of preserving health was prescribed by Christoph Wilhelm  Hufeland (1762 -1836) an eminent  German doctor best known for his 1796 book Makrobiotik oder Die Kunst das menschliche Leben zu verlängern or Macrobiotics: The Art of Prolonging Life, which  focuses on disease prevention, natural therapeutics, and a vital “life force” by balancing physical habits, diet, and mental calm to achieve longevity.

The book was edited by one of the German “pirates” we met in last week’s post: Johann Gottfried Grohmann who was a philosophy professor at Leipzig University. Published in 1800 it contains descriptions of a dozen outdoor games  with engravings commissioned by Grohmann  and his publisher Adam Baumgartner. As both men were  particularly interested in gardens and gardening they also used this as an opportunity to have fashionable structures and ornaments as settings for the games.   It’s worth pointing out again that  English taste in gardens – the picturesque, Gothick revival and rustic work – were all becoming extremely fashionable across all of Western Europe  and what Grohmann and Baumgärtner were aiming to do was cash in on that.

I’ve tried to trace the history of the various garden games, and see if any of them were played elsewhere or even are played today, but with very limited success.

If I’m completely honest the rules – and even the names – of some games are weird and fairly incomprehensible, and none more so than the first one which is called Das Spickelierspiel.   Take a good look at the image above and try and work out what the four men are doing. The game is being played in front of what Grohmann calls  a rustic aviary in the form of a chapel.

In North German dialects, a Spieker or Spickel is a wooden peg, stick, or large nail. So this is a Stick Throwing game. Simplistically it involves one person throwing a pointed stick into soft ground and the next throwing their stick to try and displace the first. If they succeed they can throw the ousted stick as far away as possible. Its owner chases after it and in turn is chased by the other stick thrower trying to whack him in what in German is called a Plumpsack -which can be loosely described as a soft knotted tea-towel. It’s more complicated than that of course and there are different versions but they don’t get any less silly. 

There’s no direct modern  equivalent of the second game  Das Scheibenkollern which  translates  as the disc or plate-rolling game.  Four players in teams of two take in turns to try and roll their plates along the path leading to their partner. Players on the other team attempt to roll their plate to hit that plate at the intersection, marked out by four posts. Success was marked with a prize and defeat by a whack with the Plumpsack.

The scene is ornamented with another rustic building of rough timber, thatched and again in the shape of a chapel with plants climbing up the corner posts.

 

We get onto safer ground with the third game Die sehende Blindekuh or Blind Man’s Buff which I’m sure I don’t have to explain.

It’s one of the few that is probably universal and can be traced back to medieval times as seen in Joseph Strutt’s encyclopaedic Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801) which also shows [I think] the English equivalent of a Plumpsack  in the hands of the three other characters.

Equally ancient but with many variations and forms, almost all quite cruel is Game 4 Das Hahnschlagen or Striking the Rooster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The spectators are seen here standing under a chinoiserie parasol in the centre of a small turf amphitheatre watching a blindfolded competitor holding a threshing flail.  In front of him but some distance away is a large upturned pot with a chicken in it.   After being blindfolded  and given the flail he is then led around the pot in a circle three times and brought back to the exact place where he had been standing before his eyes were covered. With any luck he counted the number of steps he took because now  he has to find the pot again and hit it with the flail.  If he gets too close and hits its with his foot he is out. Everyone takes it in turn until someone succeeds  and their prize is the chicken. Grohmann tells us that for clarity the illustration shows the chicken’s head peeping out from the pot but in reality it would be hidden inside.

Trying to strike a rooster  has a history long before 1800, especially in Germany and Central Europe – although there many variants. In Breughel’s painting of children’s games there might not have been a chicken hidden under the pot. Other variants have the target pot placed among numerous decoy pots and secretly moved about, and in at least one early variant  there was  no pot at all. This was recorded being “played” at a Regensburg festival in 1586, where the competitors thrown sticks at a cockerel which was tethered to the ground, presumably with the object of killing it.

Another simple version  seems to be included in Hogarth’s series of etchings on Cruelty in the mid-18th century, and definitely  by Grohmann’s time there were protests against the game because it was conducted “at the expense of a creature”.

The game is still played today in Lower Lusatia/Niederlausitz, in eastern Germany very close to the Polish border, although now there’s no chicken in the pot

 

 

Grohmann tells us that the game of Kurzschub, a fairly basic form of skittles,  “is very common in Thuringia  and is known there by the name Krickelkrakel.” The skittles are arranged either at angles, as on an ordinary skittle alley, or, as represented here, or in a straight line, though spaced quite widely apart.  The main difference to “standard” skittles is that players could stand and play from anywhere.   The pitch here is set in front of  an arbour or cabin of latticework, with what Grohmann describes as  a small menagerie attached on either side.

For more on its history see my earlier post about skittles more generally.

The next game has a bizarre name Das Fröschchenstreichen or “Stroking the Little Frog”. I think it must derive from the sound made by one of the two players.   They are both blindfolded and tied to a post.  The first player has two pieces of wood, one with notches and the other smooth. When the smooth piece is rubbed along the notched piece it is said to make the sound of a frog croaking. In doing so of course he gives away his location. The second player is given a Plumpsack  to follow the sound and whack the frog if he can.  Since neither can see what they’re doing and the ropes frequently entangled they often fall over to much hilarity.  And that, says Grohmann,”is the entire game.” What I have been unable to find is any earlier version or indeed any other version.

Here the garden feature is a high level viewing platform  with a thatched roof, simple railings and the flights of steps  the whole structure has the appearance of a Chinese bridge, another equally fashionable feature.

Next we have an ornamental  garden feature -three arches, well spaced and covered with climbing plants – which double up  as a purpose-built space for Das Amorspiel or the Game of Love. In the centre of the furthest arch is a heart-shaped target on a post, while on the nearest is a  a wooden figure of Cupid, hanging from a rope, weighted with lead and  armed with a metal arrow.  Players take it in turns to swing Cupid towards the heart and the first to get the arrow  to stick there  wins the prize.

Another game with a weird name is Das Faulenballschlagen. The prefix Faulen– meaning lazy describes the unusual low-effort method of putting the ball in play, so the title is probably best translated as Hitting the Lazy Ball. I can’t find any other mentions of it so I can only assume it was a local variant of some better known ball game,

Grohmann explains that there are two teams on either side of an open space with a line drawn across it to separate them and a stick pushed into the ground in the middle of the line. On one side of the pitch  is a flat block or stand – in this case the tree trunk on the left. A thin board is laid across it with a ball place on the far end and then carefully balanced. One player – the striker – then hits the other end of the board as hard as possible with a stick. This catapults the ball into the air and towards  the line dividing the playing area.  While the ball is still in the air, the player who launched it runs as quickly as possible towards the stick on the dividing line strikes it with his stick. If he has thrown the ball sufficiently high, and has been quick enough in running to accomplish this before one of the opposing team — who must watch the flight of the ball carefully — catches it, each team remains in its existing territory. If not, the two teams change places and roles.

The pitch is overlooked by what Grohmann calls a small hermitage with a porch, supported by two trees mutilated by a storm, roofed with straw, and furnished with a turf bed and a wooden bench.

The ninth game is  Kaisers or “Emperors” which is just another version of skittles  with two players or teams who divide nine skittles between them by lot. The side who only get four  is also given the King which is just a bigger skittle, and has the right to bowl or throw first.  Each side can arrange the skittles however they like, although they must remain visible to the opposing side and they must stand behind them when they play.  The first player can roll or throw the ball at his opponents array and if they knock over one or more  the  fallen skittles must be thrown over to their side of the pitch and stood up precisely where they landed.  Turns are taken until one side has no skittles standing. Grohmann points out what you may have noticed that the draughtsman has given the players ten skittle rather than nine

The Germans seem to have adopted a couple of foreign games too. The first Das Spiel Swayka is from Russia and is named after the Swayka, which you can see in the hand of the player in the image above.  It’s large iron pin with a heavy head, often as much as 2kg, and so sharp that it easily penetrates the ground. Its weight means it turns a loop in the air when thrown and the object is to get it to land in the small iron ring in the centre of the pitch. Grohmann helpfully points out that the size of the ring can be increased or reduced according to the skill of the players.

It dates back to the 17thc at least  and according to Wikipedia Swayka was popular among lower-class Russian men up to the 20th century but interestingly the Russian version of the page has an image of much more respectable people watching a game.

The game is set in a beautiful green lawn, surrounded by a circular turf seat, with another rustic building in the background.

Das Sacklaufen is another easily recognisable game which Grohmann says explicitly is very common in England and that, when frequently repeated, it provides exercise highly beneficial to health.  Unlike my primary school days when competitors had to hold the sack up with their own hands in Grohmann’s version competitors climb right into their sacks, which are tied around their necks, and then hop or shuffle towards the endpost.  Anyone unfortunate enough to fall must, says Grohmann, for the amusement of the company, undergo a penalty imposed by them, but of course the prize goes to the first to reach the finishing point.  To prolong both the amusement and the exercise, Grohmann suggests that the prize is awarded only to someone who comes first three, four or six times in succession.

The finishing post here is itself  a column surmounted by a sphere, which at the same time serves as a sundial, although Grohmann says there is an error in the illustration in the arrangement of the numbers on the sphere,  which he  failed to spot  before sending it to the engraver. The draughtsman was clearly ignorant of gnomonics — the science of sundials – but Grohmann says he assumes that anyone actually constructing such a sundial will know the right sequence.   

The final game Der Strohmann or The Straw Man comes from Madrid, and indeed Goya painted it in action just a few year before Grohmann published his book, although it’s unclear how Grohmann knew about the game.

He explains that on Shrove Tuesday  it is not uncommon to see groups of young women in the streets of Madrid “amusing themselves in the following manner. Six, eight or twelve of them take a large linen cloth and place upon it a doll stuffed with straw. The doll must, however, be considerably smaller than the figure represented in the engraving. They then toss the straw man into the air with the cloth, while dancing and singing. Any girl who is not sufficiently careful to catch the falling straw man with the corner of the cloth she is holding is punished for her inattention by loud laughter from the others. If one of them becomes so frightened by this laughter that, in trying to escape the falling figure, she lets go of the cloth and steps backwards, she is excluded from the rest of the game.”

Grohmann then suggests how this Spanish street amusement might be improved for the sort of mixed garden party he has in mind: “This game would undoubtedly be improved if both sexes were to take part in it, and” if the defect of attentiveness were punished by the imposition of a forfeit, to be redeemed afterwards in whatever manner might be agreed upon.”

So what Grohmann is asking us to accept is that the respectable looking gentlemen in these images with their long coats, and bicorn, tricorn or cylinder hats would have leapt about playing these strenuous games … as you can see in the engraving above  and below Englishmen of the same period certainly did so maybe its a good thing that Grohmann didn’t know anything about cricket!