Royal Shrovetide Football
Royal Shrovetide Football is a "medieval football" game played annually on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in the town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, England. Shrovetide ball games have been played in England since at least the 12th century from the reign of Henry II. The Ashbourne game also known as "hugball" has been played from at least c.1667 although the exact origins of the game are unknown due to a fire at the Royal Shrovetide Committee office in the 1890s which destroyed the earliest records. One of the most popular origin theories suggests the macabre notion that the "ball" was originally a severed head tossed into the waiting crowd following an execution. Although this may have happened, it is more likely that games such as the Winchelsea Streete Game, reputedly played during the Hundred Years' War with France, were adaptations of an original ball game intended to show contempt for the enemy.
One of the earliest references to football in the county of Derbyshire comes in a poem called "Burlesque upon the Great Frost" from 1683, written after the English Civil War by Charles Cotton, cousin to Aston Cockayne, Baronet of Ashbourne :
A previously unknown tentative link between Royal Shrovetide football and La soule played in Tricot, Picardy was established in 2012 by history and sociology of sport lecturer Laurent Fournier from the Universite de Nantes. Whilst undertaking a study of "folk football", he noticed that the Coat of arms of the Cockayne family painted on a 1909 Shrovetide ball displayed in the window of the Ashbourne Telegraph office contained three cockerels in its heraldic design. He recognised this matched the emblem of Tricot where La soule is played on the first Sunday of Lent and Easter Monday. He was welcomed to Ashbourne by the Royal Shrovetide Committee and was a guest at the Shrovetide luncheon. Research into Royal Shrovetide Football's lost history is ongoing.
History
The concept of the ball game was understood in the Early Middle Ages. Writing in the 9th century, Welsh monk and historian Nennius makes reference in his book Historia Brittonum to "the field of Ælecti, in the district of Glevesing, where a party of boys were playing at ball". This account was attributed to a 5th-century source that has not survived. Ball games may have been played throughout the 1st millennium despite a lack of documented evidence. Oral traditions from the West Country and South East Wales assert that the games of Cornish "Hurling to Country" and "Hurling to Goals", Devon "Out-Hurling" and Welsh "Cnapan" played during Christian festivals have more ancient Celtic origins. The wooden balls used in these games are only found in regions where Celtic culture is still venerated. These communal events may even have started with prehistoric workers hurling forward carved wooden balls or stone balls that archaeologists have theorised could have been used to move megaliths in stone circle construction. Records from antiquity have survived relating to various ball games played by the Romans, notably Harpastum which contained many elements that feature in the Shrovetide ball game. These influences were available to a Catholic Church Clergy familiar with native customs and educated in Latin when a ball game was introduced to Shrovetide festivities.The earliest recorded Shrovetide ball game comes during the High Middle Ages from the cleric William Fitzstephen in his description of London Descriptio Nobilissimae Civitatis Londoniae. The game he witnessed was played at Carnival, an alternative name for Shrovetide, from the Latin Carnilevaria, a word variant of carne levare meaning to "leave out meat" an act of abstinence for Lent. Then as now games were played in the afternoon. His account suggests playing ball at Carnival had been an annual event for at least a generation.
…"every year on the day called Carnival—to begin with the sports of boys —scholars from the different schools bring fighting-cocks to their masters, and the whole morning is set apart to watch their cocks do battle in the schools, for the boys are given a holiday that day. After dinner all the young men of the town go out into the fields in the suburbs to play ball. The scholars of the various schools have their own ball, and almost all the followers of each occupation have theirs also. The seniors and the fathers and the wealthy magnates of the city come on horseback to watch the contests of the younger generation, and in their turn recover their lost youth: the motions of their natural heat seem to be stirred in them at the mere sight of such strenuous activity and by their participation in the joys of unbridled youth."
The location given for the "suburbs" was to the north of London. The area described of open fields and rivers is typical of the terrain still used for current games played in Ashbourne and in Workington, Cumbria, where "Uppies and Downies" games take place on Good Friday, Easter Tuesday and Easter Saturday.
…"Everywhere outside the houses of those living in the suburbs, and adjacent to them, are the spacious and beautiful gardens of the citizens, and these are planted with trees. Also there are on the north side pastures and pleasant meadow lands through which flow streams
wherein the turning of mill-wheels makes a cheerful sound"….
Although the names of the schools that participated were not stipulated, a previous reference to St. Paul's, Holy Trinity Priory and St. Martin-le-Grand College indicates these Church schools were integral to celebrating this holy-day.
…"St. Paul, the church of the Holy Trinity, and the church of St. Martin have famous schools by special privilege and by virtue of their ancient dignity. But through the favour of some magnate, or through the presence of teachers who are notable or famous in philosophy, there are also other schools"….
By the Late Middle Ages there were many incarnations of the ball game being played at Shrovetide, Eastertide and Christmastide in and around the British Isles. All were played in a similar manner with localized innovations. Some of the other better-understood games, a few of which are still played, include the Ba' game, the Atherstone Ball Game, the Sedgefield Ball Game, Bottle-kicking, Caid, Camp-ball, Football, The Shrove Tuesday Football Ceremony of the Purbeck Marblers, Haxey Hood, La soule, and Scoring the Hales. A contemporary collective term coined for these games is "Mob football".
During the early modern period public schools open to the paying public adopted the ball game as a sports activity. The version they developed was called football and was played using a bladder-inflated ball. Scholars from these schools wrote the first standard codes for football. These inspired the development of modern codes of football, many created by the descendants of emigrants who spread the concept of football around the world.
Table showing codes of conduct development to modern football
The Ashbourne game
The game is played over two days on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, starting each day at 2:00 pm and lasting until 10:00 pm. If the goal is scored before 6pm a new ball is released and play restarts from the town centre, otherwise play ends for the day. The ball is rarely kicked, though it is legal to kick, carry or throw it. Instead it generally moves through the town in a series of hugs, like a giant scrum in rugby, made up of dozens if not hundreds of people. When the ball is goaled, the scorer is carried on the shoulders of his colleagues into the courtyard of the Green Man Royal Hotel.The two teams that play the game are known as the Up'Ards and the Down'Ards. The Up'Ards are traditionally those town members born north of Henmore Brook, which runs through the town, and Down'Ards are those born south of the river. Each team attempts to carry the ball back to their own goal from the turn-up, rather than the more traditional method of scoring at/in the opponents goal. There are two goal posts apart, one at Sturston Mill, the other at Clifton Mill. Although the mills have long since been demolished, part of their millstones still stand on the bank of the river at each location and indeed themselves once served as the scoring posts. In 1996 the scoring posts were replaced once again by new smaller millstones mounted onto purpose-built stone structures, which are still in use to this day and require the players to actually be in the river in order to "goal" a ball, as this was seen as more challenging.
The actual process of "goaling" a ball requires a player to hit it against the millstone three successive times. This is not a purely random event, however, as the eventual scorer is elected en route to the goal and would typically be someone who lives in Ashbourne or at least whose family is well known to the community. The chances of a "tourist" goaling a ball are very remote, though they are welcome to join in the effort to reach the goal. When a ball is "goaled" that particular game ends.
The game is played through the town with no limit on the number of players or the playing area. Thus shops in the town are boarded up during the game, and people are encouraged to park their cars away from the main streets. The game is started from a special plinth in the town centre where the ball is thrown to the players, often by a visiting dignitary. Before the ball is turned-up, the assembled crowd sing "Auld Lang Syne" followed by "God Save the King". The starting point has not changed in many years, although the town has changed around it; as a consequence, the starting podium is currently located in the town's main car park, which is named Shaw Croft, this being the ancient name of the field in which it stands.
The game has been known as "Royal" since 1928, when the then–Prince of Wales turned up the ball. The prince suffered a bloody nose. The game received royal assent for a second time in 2003, when the game was once again started by the Prince of Wales, in this instance Prince Charles. On this occasion, the prince threw the ball into play from a raised plinth. It is traditional for the dignitary of the day to be raised aloft near Compton Bridge, as the turner-up is escorted into the Shawcroft en route from the luncheon at the Leisure centre.