apparently, rather a rude variety of knurr and spell than of cricket This form is mentioned by Strutt.[1] Both stool-ball and cat-and-dog have closer affinities with cricket than clubball as represented in Strutt's authorities.[2] Perhaps we may say that wherever stool-ball was played, or cat-and-dog, there cricket was potentially present. As to the derivation of the word 'cricket,' philologists differ as much as usual. Certainly 'cricket' is an old word for a stool, though in this sense it does not occur in Skeat.[3] In Todd's 'Johnson,' we find, 'Cricket: a low seat or stool, from German kriechen, to creep.' In Scotland we talk of a 'creepy-stool'
It's a wise wife that kens her weird,
What though ye mount the creepy!
says Allan Ramsay, meaning the stool of repentance. If, then, stool-ball be the origin of cricket, and if a cricket be a stool, 'cricket' may be merely a synonym for stool-ball. Todd's 'Johnson,' with ignominious ignorance, styles cricket 'a sport in which the contenders drive a ball with sticks or bats in opposition to each other.' Johnson must have known better. In the 'Rambler,' No. 30, he writes, 'Sometimes an unlucky boy will drive his cricket-ball full in my face.' Observe, he says 'drive,' not 'cut,' nor 'hit to leg.'
Professor Skeat says nothing of this derivation of 'cricket' from cricket, a stool. He thinks 'et' may be a diminutive, added to the Anglo-Saxon cricc, a staff. If that be so, cricket will mean club-play rather than stool-ball. In any case, Professor Skeat has a valuable quotation of 'cricket' from the French and English Dictionary compiled in 1611, by Mr. Randle
- ↑ P. 101.
- ↑ The miniature in which a woman bowls to a back-handed player with no wicket is dated 1344. Bodl., 264. But the evidence of art is never very trustworthy. The painter may have been a woman, or a monk, or an uneducated person. Many of the pictures in modern books give a misleading view of cricket.
- ↑ Etymological Dictionary, 1882. The writer here owes a great deal to Dr. Murray, of the English Dictionary, who kindly lent him the 'slips' (short, of course) on Cricket, as far as they have been collected.—A. L.
