Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Obsolete card-games
OBSOLETE CARD-GAMES.
There is no authentic record of card-playing in Europe earlier than the end of the fourteenth century, though it is probable that cards were known to some few persons as early as 1350. It seems strange that it has never been satisfactorily ascertained when the most fascinating species of gambling ever invented was first introduced; strange, that it should still be doubtful whether card-playing was engrafted from some other quarter of the world, or whether it was a European invention. It is true that there are traditions of the existence of playing-cards from time immemorial in Hindostan, where the Brahmins claim to have invented them. There is also a legend that playing-cards were invented in China, for the amusement of Seun-ho’s numerous concubines, in the year 1120. There is a third hypothesis, which delivers over to the gipsies the invention of cards at a remote epoch. But, granting that there is some foundation for all these theories, still the fact remains that, even if cards did exist earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century, the mode of playing with them has not survived.
The game of primero, prime, or primavista, is allowed by most authorities to be the oldest known card game. Sir John Harrington, in his punning epigram “On the games that have been in request at the Court,” has the following:—
The courtly gamesters all were in their prime.
According to Nares, primero resembled a more modern game called l’ambigu, but Seymour, in The “Court Gamester,” published early in the eighteenth century, gives a different version. Speaking of ombre (quadrille), he says, “It is an improvement of a game called primero, formerly in great vogue among the Spaniards. Primero is played with six cards, ombre with nine,—that being the material difference. As to the terms, they are mostly the same.[1] He who holds cinquo primero (which is a sequence of five of the best cards and a good trump) is sure to be successful over his adversary. Hence the game takes its denomination.” Minshew, in his “Guide into Tongues," says that primero means first, and primavista first seen; and that the game is so called “because he that can show such an order of cards first, wins.”
It can hardly be doubted that primero was a game of Spanish origin. It is said to have been introduced into this country by Catherine of Arragon, or at all events by her followers. Shakspere makes out that King Henry VIII. played at primero. Gardiner says that he left the king “at primero with the Duke of Suffolk.” The game was certainly fashionable in the reign of Elizabeth. Lord Burleigh seems to have occasionally indulged in a hand at primero. A picture by Zuccaro, from Lord Falkland’s collection, represents the grave Lord Treasurer playing at cards with three other persons, who from their dress appear to be of distinction, each having two rings on the same finger of both hands. The cards are marked on the face as now, but they differ from our present cards in being longer and narrower; antiquaries are of opinion that the game represented in the picture is the game of primero.
A passage in an old play, Greene’s “Tu Quoque,” has been quoted by several writers as evidence that primero was a gambling game: “Primero, why I thought thou hadst not been so much gamester as play at it.” But a person who objects to cards might make such a remark with respect to any card-game, whether a gambling game or not. Judging from the partial descriptions of the game which remain to us, it would seem that primero might be played either for large or small stakes, as agreed on. In Florio’s “Second Frutes” (1591), a very scarce book, primero is played by two persons for “one shilling stake and three rest” (?pool). In Minshew’s “Spanish Dialogues” four play; the stake is two shillings and the rest, eight. The mode of play is but imperfectly known.
The earliest game of cards indigenous to England seems to have been the game of trump, the predecessor of our national game of whist. It was played at least as early as the time of Edward VI., for in the comedy of "Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” said to have been first printed in 1551, old Dame Chat invites two of her acquaintances to a game at trump.
We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fyre;
Thou shalt set on the king if thou come a little nyer.
Come hither, Dol; Dol, sit down and play this game,
And as thou sawest me do, see thou do even the same.
There is five trumps besides the queen, the hindmost thou shalt find her.
In Decker’s “Belman,” published about the same period, we are told that “deceipts [are] practised even in the fayrest and most civill companies, at primero, sant, maw, trump, and such like games.”
Trump is supposed to have been very like whist. There was a group of games—trump, ruff, slam, ruff and honours, and, whisk and swabbers—which were closely allied, and out of which modern whist has been born. All card-players are aware that ruff and trump are synonymous. In Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary” (1611), we find "Triomphe, the card game called ruffe or trump.” Ruff and trump, however, were not identical. We find them distinguished from each other by Taylor, the water poet (1630), in enumerating the games at which the prodigal squanders his money.
At novum, mumchance, mischance, choose ye which,
At one-and-thirty, or at poor-and-rich;
Ruffe, slam, trump, noddy, whisk, hole, sant, new-cut.
*****
At primifisto, post-and-payre, primero,
Maw, whip-her-ginny, he’s a liberal hero;
At my-sow-pigged;—but (reader, never doubt ye),
He’s skilled in all games, except look-about-ye.
Ruff and honours, and slam, and whist, are also kept distinct from each other by Cotton, in the “Compleat Gamester” (1680). He says: “Ruff and honours (alias slam), and whist, are games so commonly known in England in all parts thereof, that every child almost of eight years old hath a competent knowledge in that recreation; and therefore I am unwilling to speak anything more of them than this, that there may be a great deal of art used in dealing and playing at these games, which differ very little one from the other.” According to Seymour, trump is a corruption of the word triumph, “for where they [trumps] are, they are attended with conquest.”
In the reign of James I., the fashionable game was maw. James I. was himself a card-player. A pamphlet preserved in the British Museum, entitled, “Tom Tell-Troath; or, Free Discourse touching the Manners of the Time” (circa 1622), thus alludes to the taste for cards. “In the very gaming ordinaries, where men have scarce leisure to say grace, yet they take a time to censure your Majestie’s actions. They say you have lost the fairest game at maw that ever King had, for want of making the best advantage of the five-finger [five of trumps] and playing the other helpes in time. That your owne card holders play bootie, and give the signe out of your owne hande.”
The game of maw differed but little from that subsequently called five-cards; and five-cards again is substantially the same as the modern Irish game of spoil-five. It is probable that the game of five-cards was carried to Ireland by Oliver Cromwell’s army.
Gleek was reckoned a genteel game in Ben Jonson’s time. It was played by three persons. It is described at great length in a book entitled “Wit’s Interpreter,” published in 1670.
The other principal card-games of the period were ledam, noddy, bankerout, saunt, lanterloo, knave-out-of-doors, and post-and-pair. Sir John Harrington mentions lodam as succeeding maw in court patronage. It is not known how it was played.
Noddy is supposed by some to have been the original of cribbage, because the knave was called noddy. But it would seem that the game of noddy was played for counters, and that it was fifteen or twenty-one up. In Salton's tales, a young heir is likened to "a gamester at noddy; one-and-twenty makes him out." Nares says that noddy was not played with a board; but Gayton (Festivous Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654) speaks of noddy boards.
Saunt and sant are merely corruptions of cent, or cientos, a Spanish game. It was named cientos because the game was a hundred. It is supposed to have been the same as piquet.
Lanterloo was very similar to loo. The first mention of lanterloo occurs in a Dutch pamphlet (circa 1648).
Knave-out-of-doors was probably the same game as poore-and-rich, or as beggar-my-neighbour.
Post-and-pair is said to have resembled the game of commerce. It was played with three cards each; and much depended on vying, or betting, on the goodness of your own hand. A pair-royal of aces was the best hand, and next, a pair-royal of any three cards according to their value. If no one had a pair-royal, the highest pair won, and next to this, the hand that held the highest cards. This description seems to apply more nearly to brag than to commerce.
In Cotton's "Compleat Gamester," we find, in addition to the games already mentioned, the following which are obsolete—ombre, French-ruff, costly-colours, bone-ace, wit-and-reason, the art of memory, plain-dealing, Queen Nazareen, penneech, bankafalet, and beast. Most of these defunct games were very babyish contrivances. Boneace, for instance, was admitted by Cotton to be "trivial and very inconsiderable, by reason of the little variety therein contained; but," added the author, "because I have seen ladies and persons of quality have plaid at it for their diversions, I will briefly describe it, and the rather, because it is a licking game for money." The whole game consisted in this, the dealer dealt three cards to each player, the first two being dealt face downwards and the third being turned up. The biggest card turned up carried the bone, that is, half the pool, and the nearest to thirty-one in hand won the other half.
The games mentioned by Cotton, which are still practised, are all superior games; games of variety, and games into which skill largely enters. They are piquet, cribbage, all-fours, and whist. Of these whist is the king. It has been the game for some hundred and twenty years and its never-ending variety, and its well adjusted complements of skill and chance, seem likely to continue it in undisturbed possession of modern card-rooms.
- ↑ Seymour is mistaken on this point.