Europe, 1200 to 1600

Early Games

Wandering minstrels traveled and performed songs with lyrics that chronicled romances from distant lands. These itinerate musicians and storytellers declaimed tales of historic [Page 198]events and carried news. Wandering minstrels were often retained by nobility to entertain like jesters and played lutes, harps, violins, bagpipes, pipes, and drums. When the songs ended, jugglers and acrobats performed. From the 1200s to 1400s, troubadours (lyric poets) of knightly rank replaced minstrels in southern France and northern Italy, promoting a sensibility of courtly love.

In Pieter Bruegel's 1559 painting Children's Games, children are depicted playing with dolls, hoops, tops, dice, and a hobby horse, and riding on rails and barrels, performing acrobatics, climbing trees, giving piggyback rides, wrestling, and swimming.

Doll play was not restricted to children. Peddlers sold miniature ceramics, jugs, and cookware, as well as utensils. Girls played with dolls to develop practical skills like sewing, along with imagination, role-playing, and imitation. Hobby horses and imitation horses were popular with boys and girls. Metal models of knights in armor have been found that date back to 1300. Playing with marbles developed dexterity. Games such as Dice, Cards, Checkers, and Chess were popular because they developed strategy and memory. Play often incorporated ordinary materials and foodstuffs in games like cherry stones, marrow bone, buckle-pit, spurn point, cobnut, and quoiting. With cobnuts, the objects were used in game play as well as for currency for measuring gains and losses. The popular guessing game Handy-Dandy was played with a small object hidden in the palm of a hand behind the player's back.

With widespread illiteracy, the Catholic Church encouraged parish priests to act out scenes from the Bible. As time passed, the scriptural stories were embellished, so the Bible drama became a form of entertainment. Play also reflected the activities of changing seasons and church calendars. Prior to Lent, boys held cockfighting games on Shrove Tuesday, and children played with tops during Lent. During spring and early summer, holidays including Rogation Week, Pentecost, and Midsummer Day festivals provided occasions for communal play. On Midsummer's Eve, children gathered to entertain each other with music and songs. From late June to September, children participated in [Page 199]the harvest season. Nutting—seeking and harvesting nuts—became popular group play accompanied with bonfires and games. All Saints Day, November 1, came at the time of the pig slaughter, and pig bladders were used to make balls that were used in playing Croquet, Shuttlecock, Skittles, and tennis.

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