is a "keeping up" game dating from at least the 14th century. Evidence for this is to be found in the British Museum Library in a [circa 1390] manuscript wood cut engraving depicting two medieval peasant boys playing the game. They are wielding two blunt ended, paddle shaped bats, curiously reminiscent of butter pats. [implements for patting butter into shape.]
is "Battledore and Shuttlecock" in both Great Britain and the U.S.A. but other countries in the world have different names for it. Thus in Belgium, South Africa and The Netherlands it is known as "Pluimbal", in France "Le Coquentin or more commonly "Le Volant", in Germany "Federballspiel", in Japan "Hanetsuki" [see separate chapter], in Sweden "Fjaderboll, whilst the Meau tribe in north west Thailand play a similar game called "Ndi". [see Miscellaneous chapter]
N.B: In some parts of France the game is still played today using local descriptive names. Thus in the area of Anjou it is called "greiche" [a species of the shrike bird], in the Lyon area "picandeau" and in the Champagne area "pilvotiau".
Only two pieces of equipment are needed to play the game. A Shuttlecock and a Battledore. A Shuttlecock is a unique substitute for a ball which is familiar to all in this day and age.The name is descriptive in that the "shuttle" part of it describes the backward and forward flight whereas the "cock" refers to the feathers which are inserted into the cork base to give it stability in the air.
A battledore on the other hand, being unfamiliar to most, needs some explanation.
Reference to a dictionary gives the definitions of either a "washing beetle" or a "horn book". Both of these are pieces of ancient equipment which could have been pressed into service as striking implements with which to project the shuttlecock into the air.
In the days before washing machines, "washing beetles" were used by women,who did their washing out of doors, often in rivers, to beat the wet laundry on a stone to get the dirt out, before hanging it out to dry.
"Washing Beetles" come in various shapes and sizes, the largest being shaped like a cricket bat, whereas smaller versions from Ireland are very reminiscent of table tennis bats.
Possibly the oldest known illustration of a "washing beetle" is to be found as a misericord in Carlisle Cathedral. Dated 1401, it depicts a wife hitting her husband over the head with it.
Several old washing beetles exist to this day in museums around the country and a book entitled "A WOMAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE" by Caroline Davidson [Chatto and Windus 1982] includes several prints showing washing beetles in use.
Originally a "Horn Book" was a piece of board shaped something like a rectangular table tennis bat on which was pasted either the alphabet or numbers or perhaps The Lord's Prayer. They were covered in transparent horn to protect them from rough handling. Their purpose was to teach young children their basic learning skills.
If you like to visit churches old country houses etc., you will no doubt be familiar with individual information boards with handles attached onto which are pasted [say] a description of a room which is being visited or the history of a church for example. These are, in effect, adult horn books.
But there is another ancient piece of equipment which could have been pressed into service as a bat - the butter pat. Butter pats are shaped wooden boards used to pat butter into shape.
The earliest known Battledore and Shuttlecock print referred to in the opening paragraph depicts two medieval serfs holding bats shaped very much like these implements and if you refer to the "Miscellaneous page" reference to the indigenous Japanese game of "Hanetsuki" you will see that this same shape, which originated there in the middle ages, still survives to this day.
Having said all that about the origins of Battledores by the 17th or 18th centuries solid wooden bats were replaced by small strung rackets of various shapes and sizes. Later still in the 18th and 19th centuries drum racquets [hollow racquets faced with parchment or vellum] came into favour. They did not entirely replace strung racquets but more or less existed beside them. Today of course the drum racquet has disappeared and the strung racquet again rules supreme.
The game is so simple to play that, as far as I am aware, there are no official rules, the sole object being to keep the shuttlecock in the air for as long as possible by continually hitting it upwards.
The game can be played either by two persons hitting the shuttlecock to each other or by a lone player. If two people play a point is lost by the player who lets the shuttle fall to the ground. If one person plays the aim is to keep a tally of the number of hits and try to better one's previous highest score.
It is known that Battledore and Shuttlecock was a favourite game of the children at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, because in a drawer in the room in which Badminton was first played there is a drum racquet which was used by them. On the parchment blade are the two following handwritten inscriptions:
"Kept up with with Lady Somerset on Saturday, January 12th. 1830 to 2117. Henrietta [the next word is indecipherable]" The second message reads "The Lady Henrietta Somerset in February, 1845 kept up with Beth Mitchell 2018".
Some historians believe that this is the case. However it must be pointed out that the objective in a game of Battledore and Shuttlecock is to keep the shuttlecock in the air for as long as possible. On the other hand the prime objective in a game of Badminton is to ground the shuttlecock on the other side of the net at the first opportunity.
It is a common sight on beaches, in parks or elsewhere in the open air to see two players using badminton racquets to hit a shuttlecock to each other without an intervening net. At the risk of being contentious I suggest that such players are in fact playing two handed Battledore and Shuttlecock even though they have probably never heard of the game.
This is an extract from the book "British Folk Customs" by Christina Hore [1976].
"the Shuttlecock or Shuttlefeather, is a very old game, which was sometimes used by young people in a form of divination. Lady Gomme suggests that this was the true origin of the game.
A question concerning the number of months before marriage, or years before death, or the initials of the future wife's husband was asked at the beginning and answered by the number of successful strokes made before the player missed, and the shuttlecock fell to the ground."
Handed down from generation to generation such rhyming chants, which are many and varied, are more usually associated with children's games. They can apply to any game including Battledore and Shuttlecock, in which it is necessary to develop a rhythm to keep it going. One has only to eavesdrop on a skipping game in a Junior School playground to hear such rhymes as:
Each word is chanted by all the participating children to coincide with the jump that the skipper makes to avoid the rope. This helps the development of a rhythm.
Having said that the following rhyme, which is specific to Battledore and Shuttlecock would probably only have been used for that game in times past.
In England, Shrove Tuesday [the day before Ash Wednesday; the first day of Lent] is also known as Pancacke Day. In days gone by certain places in the County of Leicester and in the West Riding of Yorkshire it was also known as Shuttlecock Day. On that day in those places people of all ages took to the streets to play battledore and shuttlecock and other traditional games.
The "Leicester Chronicle" for February 12th 1842, reported that "Shrove Tuesday is celebrated in Hinckley [Leicestershire] by a general game of shuttlecock and battledore, which is a very novel and amusing sight to a stranger. If however that stranger had come from the West Riding of Yorkshire, the spectacle, though it might have amused him, would not have been new to him because he would probably have seen it at home many times before on the same anniversary, in the villages of the West Riding - wrote William Henderson."
The custom is thought to have died out at the end of the 19th century.
Battledore and Shuttlecock provides more hard evidence of it's early existence than all of the other shuttlecock games put together. This is because, being primarily a children's game, many artists through the centuries have included a battledore and shuttlecock in their paintings as a symbol of childhood. It seems as if some artists possessed their own battledores and shuttlecocks to use as props in their pictures, just as child photographers today use such items as teddy bears or dolls in their photographs.
Evidence for this is to be found in two famous paintings by the French artist, Jean-Baptiste Simeon CHARDIN [1699-1779]. His portrait of a young girl holding a battledore and a shuttlecock, painted in 1737, has the title "La fillete au volant" [little girl with shuttlecock]. It is currently housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
Another painting by the same artist entitled "La Gouvernante" [The Governess] depicts a seated lady of the period earnestly talking to a young lad who is standing in front of her. On the floor beside them is a similar battledore and shuttlecock to that in the previous picture.
The whereabouts of the aforesaid "La Gouvernante" painting puzzled me for some time. I knew for a fact that it was housed in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. But I also possessed a National Trust postcard showing it to be in Tatton Park, Cheshire, England. How could the painting be in two places at once?
I have since learned that it was normal practice for famous artists to have their own schools of of students who, among other duties, made copies of their masters original paintings. [It must be remembered that there were no photographic reproduction processes around at that time.] It is likely that although most of the work would be carried out by the students, the master himself would finish a copy by painting in the difficult areas such as the face and hands.
I possess four different postcards depicting the painting. Comparing them with each other highlights differences which can only mean that they must be different paintings. The Ottawa painting for example bears the signature "chardin" above the date "1737" to the left of the door frame above the table, but it does not appear on any other the other cards. So presuming the Ottawa painting is the original, I wonder how many other copies were made and where they all are?