The Universe of Disco

Pepys' footballs explained
Walt Mankowski wrote to me with the explanation of Samuel Pepys' footballs: They are not clods of mud, as I guessed, nor horse droppings, as another correspondent suggested, but... footballs.

Walt found a reference in Montague Shearman's 1887 book on the history of football in England that specifically mentions this. Folks were playing football in the street, and because of this, Pepys took his coach to Sir Philip Warwicke's, rather than walking.

I didn't ask, but I presume Walt found this by doing some straightforward Google search for "pepys footballs" or something of the sort. For some reason, this did not even occur to me. Once Big Dictionary failed me, I was stumped. Perhaps this marks me as a member of the pre-Internet generation. I imagined this morning that this episode would be repeated, with my daughter Katara in place of Walt. "Oh, Daddy! You're so old-fashioned. Just use a Google search."

Anyway, inspired by Walt's example, or by what I imagined Walt's example to be, I did the search myself, and found the Shearman reference, as well as the following discussion in William Carew Hazlitt's Faiths and Folklore of 1905:

Mission, writing about 1690, says: "In winter foot-ball is a useful and charming exercise. It is a leather ball about as big as one's head, fill'd with wind. This is kick'd about from one to t'other in the streets, by him that can get at it, and that is all the art of it."

Thanks very much, Walt.

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