Cotgrave. He translates the French crosse 'a crosier, or bishop's staffe, also a cricket staffe, or the crooked staffe wherewith boies play at cricket.' Now the name of the club used in French Flanders at the local kind of golf is la crosse. It is a heavy, barbaric kind of golf-club.[1]
Thanks to Cotgrave, then, we know that in 1611 cricket was a boy's game, played with a crooked staff. The club, bat, or staff continued to be crooked or curved at the blade till the middle of the eighteenth century or later; and till nearly 1720 cricket was mainly a game for boys. We may now examine the authorities for the earliest mentions of cricket.
People have often regarded Florio's expression in his Italian Dictionary (1598) cricket-a-wicket as the first mention of the noble game. It were strange indeed if this great word first dropped from the pen of an Italian! The quotation is 'sgrittare to make a noise as a cricket; to play cricket-a-wicket and be merry.' I have no doubt myself that this is a mere coincidence of sound. The cricket (on the hearth) is a merry little beast, or has that reputation. The term 'cricket-a-wicket' is a mere rhyming reduplication of sounds like 'hob-nob' or 'tooral-ooral,' or the older 'Torelore,' the name of a mythical country in a French romance of the twelfth century. It is an odd coincidence, no doubt, that the rhyming reduplication should associate wicket with cricket. But, for all that, 'cricketa-wicket' must pair off with 'helter-skelter,' 'higgledy-piggledy,' and Tarabara to which Florio gives cricket-a-wicket as an equivalent.[2]
Yet cricket was played in England, by boys at least, in Florio's time. The proof of this exists, or existed, in the 'Constitution Book of Guildford,' a manuscript collection of records once in the possession of that town. In the 'History of Guildford,' an anonymous compilation, published by Russell in the
