ABSTRACT
The ball appears to have originally been a small leather one, similar to a cricket ball, but by the Middle Ages it was made from a pig’s bladder and, initially at least, filled with dried peas. In most forms of the game kicking, carrying and throwing the ball were all permitted, although the few versions that were based on kicking the ball became known as ‘kicking camp’ and tended to use a larger ball. ‘Savage camp’ was a variation in which players could wear heavily shod boots in order to kick each other’s shins; a forerunner of ‘hacking’, which was so beloved by nineteenth-century public-school rugby players. Other versions, which allowed the use of sticks, evolved into bandy and early forms of hockey.
