The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1899-02-10
THE GAME OF QUOITS.
rAN BE PLAYED ANY PLACE AND IS
SPLENDID EXERCISE.

can BE PLAYED ANY PLACE AND IS
SPLENDID EXERCISE.
It Ii a Very Ancient English Fas-
time. and its Beginnings Are Lost
In the Mist of Ages-Fine Training
For the Eye and Arm.
There are some games which have
never had their boom, and quoits is n
81 them. Still, as nothing happens but
The unexpected, it may be that the time
ls nearly ripe for quoits to be taken out
Il it's undeserved obscurity, to be exalt-
I'd to the status Of a national game, to
have weekly papers named after it and
to have columns in the sporting press
devoted to the doings Of its champions.
Stranger things have happened. Who,
tor instance, would have said when at
the end of the sixties a few energetic
sportsmen went webbing about on bone
shaking bicycles which it would have
been far easier to push than to ride
that at the end of the century consider
ably more than 100. 900 bicycles would
be manufactured annually in Great
Britain alone and that a great part
of the population would adopt this
means of locomotion? One cannot i'm
agine that quoits will ever attain such
popularity as the bicycle, but the un-
prejudiced person a see no reason
why it should not become as favorite a
.pastime as golf, which a very few yecrs
ago was almost unheard of south of the
Tweed.
Quoits is a very fine game, especially
in the winter time. It is splendid exer-
else and trains the eye and the hand to
act together in a way that few other
sports can do. for the very essence Of it
is accuracy Of aim at a mark placed be-
low the level of the hand. It has been
objected that throwing quoits makes
the player lopsided, but, after all. that
is easily remedied. for there is nothing
to prevent the player throwing the
quot with his left hand if he so pleases,
and such a change would make a varia-
ton in the game and also afford an ex-
cellent method of handicapping the men
of unequal skill. Quoits strengthens the
arms and shoulders, but it is not a pas
time which primarily demands strength.
A great advantage Of the game is that
it a be played in any small space and
that the ground need not be particular,
ly level. Any rough field or waste bit
of ground is good enough for a quoits
pitch, and no rolling or cutting is re-
quired to satisfy the demands Of the
most exigent. For cricket you need a
carefully prepared wicket, for lawn
tennis and croquet a piece Of turf like
a billiard table and for golf the best
part of a country all to yourself, but for
quoits you only need a few yards Of
rough ground, and you have as good a
place for throwing as any n can pos
sibly require.
People certainly might play quoits
more than they do, but the taking up
of a game is usaally a matter of fancy,
and perhaps two things stand in the
way Of quoits. First, there is an idea
that it is a rustic" sport and can only
be played by the rough country lads,
and. second. there is the legend that
the game is derived from the classical
discus throwing, a suspicion which it
must be confessed is enough to throw a
slur on any well regulated game.
No treatise on quoits can begin with
out the time honored pedigree Of the
QUOT from the discus. Strut, who lived
at the end Of the last century, of course
dealt with it, and equally of curse he
dragged in the discus even if he did not
invent the descent of quoits from the
sports of ancient Greece. The thing, of
course, is absurd. To make a discus,
the artisan did not, in the words Of the
immortal Irishman, take a hole and put
some iron around it. The discus was
more like a 1attened Dutch cheese and
was a solid missile. Moreover, it was
not held in the same manner as a quot,
but was bowled underhand, in which
indeed it alone differs from putting the
weight. That quoits is now played
chiefly in the country is the fault of
those who do not play it and bring it
into fashion.
It is no doubt a very ancient English
game, and it's beginnings are lost in the
mist Of ages. Hakluyt mentions it in
his book Of Voyages" SO it was well
known in Queen Elizabeth s. time. when
it probably was one Of the favorite
sports Of Merrie England. In some
parts of the country the rustics used to
employ horseshoes for want of properly
made quoits. and there are districts in
which the QUOT is called a ''shoe'' even
to this day. This gives us the clew to
the most probable origin Of the sport
and hints that the first game Of quoits
was started by throwing old horseshoes
at the hob or mark, and from this grad
ually grew up the practice of having
qqcits specially made for throwing. So
much for the discus legend. As for the
word ''quoit" itself, its etymology is
more than doubtful, and it gives us no
clew whatever to the origin Of the
game.