Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1920 — MARBLES AN ANCIENT GAME [ARTICLE]

MARBLES AN ANCIENT GAME

Hee Been Popular, In Ono Form or Another, for Many Hundreds , 1 of Years. Certainly played by the Roman Empeeor Augustus, the game of marbles is of great antiquity. Tn the early days nuts were used instead of the marbles. In some seventeenth-century verses a law student Is described as a “dab at taw." The phrase “knuckle down at taw" is almost classical, and the rule doubtless explains the fact that the game is almost confined to boys, for girls naturally dislike the disciplinary process of pressing the knuckle of their forefinger upbn the stone or gravel. word taw means (1) the marble itself, especially the alleytaw; (2) the ring Into which marbles are shot; (3) the line behind which the player must keep his foot when he shoots. — ~ — The origin of the term is uncertain, and it is sometimes less correctly written tor, to which Dickens has given the sanction of his authority when he represents Mr. Pickwick making inquiries as to young Berdell's alleytors. The alley-taw —of doubly uncertain derivation —is the best kind of marble, which the player always uses for his shot, if he Is lucky enough to possess such a one; while the commoner sorts are used as butts to be aimed at, or counters to be won or lost. The alley-taw was. and still commonly Is, made of real marble (originally, it is said, of alabaster), and is niost prized if it contains red veins, being then called a blood-alley. It might be worth fifty of the baser sort, or even be outside the possibility of barter. Next in value , came stonles, made of hard grey stone and glazed. Potteys were also glazed and were made of day, appearing in many different colors. Commoneys or maradiddles were of unbaked clay. Glass marbles were seldom used, being relegated to girls or to the curious game of solitaire.