Thanks for posting this. I saw a special on ESPN years back about unusual sports around the world and this was one of the one highlighted, along with Irish Road Bowling. I couldn't remember the name but the sport itself has stuck in my mind ever since.
In Northern England, there's a group of games, similar to this, Knurr and Spell, Nipsy, and Tip Cat, they were popular in the mining towns and steel towns of South Yorkshire, but seem to have largely died out. I can remember playing a similar game when I was about ten years old, however, in the version we played, you set up a stone on a sort of lever (improvised out of bits of broken branches). The batsman first has to strike downward on the lever to launch the stone vertically about two feet into the air, and be fast enough to strike it with at full-powered swing at its highest point. I was interested then, on reading your post, and googling the old dialect names for the games I remember, to find 'Nipsi' is a germanic game that found its way to Pennsylvania. So, I'm guessing the Swiss game you show here, and Nipsi, Knurr and Spell, and Tip-Cat all have a common root. http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/knur-spell.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T22eIJZFCaY
Thanks for posting this. I saw a special on ESPN years back about unusual sports around the world and this was one of the one highlighted, along with Irish Road Bowling. I couldn't remember the name but the sport itself has stuck in my mind ever since.
ReplyDeleteIn Northern England, there's a group of games, similar to this, Knurr and Spell, Nipsy, and Tip Cat, they were popular in the mining towns and steel towns of South Yorkshire, but seem to have largely died out. I can remember playing a similar game when I was about ten years old, however, in the version we played, you set up a stone on a sort of lever (improvised out of bits of broken branches). The batsman first has to strike downward on the lever to launch the stone vertically about two feet into the air, and be fast enough to strike it with at full-powered swing at its highest point. I was interested then, on reading your post, and googling the old dialect names for the games I remember, to find 'Nipsi' is a germanic game that found its way to Pennsylvania. So, I'm guessing the Swiss game you show here, and Nipsi, Knurr and Spell, and Tip-Cat all have a common root.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/knur-spell.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T22eIJZFCaY
> you set up a stone on a sort of lever
Deletethat same sort of game was played in western ukraine in the early 20th century.
I-)
the game was called 'kichky' (кічки) KEECH-kih in ukr.
DeleteI-)