Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Pall mall (pronounced pal-mal) or palle maille was a game played in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a precursor to croquet. The name comes from the Italian pallamaglio, which literally means "-mallet-ball". It was played in a long alley with an iron hoop suspended over the ground at the end. The object was to strike a boxwood ball of about 1 foot (30cm) in circumference (about the same size as a modern croquet ball) with a heavy wooden mallet along the alley and through the hoop with the fewest hits possible.
Pall mall was popular in Italy, France and Scotland, and spread to England in the 17th century. The name "pall mall" refers not only to the game, but also to the mallet used and the alley in which it was played. Many cities still have long straight roads or promenades which evolved from the alleys in which the game was played. Such in London are Pall Mall and The Mall, in Hamburg the Palmaille and in Utrecht (NL) the Maliebaan. When the game fell out of fashion, some of these pall malls evolved into shopping precincts, hence the modern name of shopping centres in the USA: shopping malls[citation needed]; others evolved into grassed shady promenades, still called malls today.
The game, and its gentler descendent lawn billiards, is administered by the Hampstead Lawn Billiard and Skittles Club[1], and it has recently been revived by the Village CC[2] who have been asked to play it in the 2012 Olympics as a demonstration sport.
1893 text
The game was originally played in the road now styled Pall Mall, near St. James’s Square, but at the Restoration when sports came in fashion again the street was so much built over, that it became necessary to find another ground. The Mall in St. James’s Park was then laid out for the purpose.
Annotations
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[Originally posted to the Pall Mall page on 27 July 2003 by Paul Miller.]
In seventeenth and eighteenth century France, mallet and ball games were quite popular and one of them,
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[Originally posted to the Pall Mall page on 27 July 2003 by Grahamt.]
Paille Maille Translates as
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[Originally posted to the Pall Mall page on 28 July 2003 by Pauline.]
Pell-mell Headlong; in reckless confusion. From the players of pallmall, who rush heedlessly to strike the ball. The
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Pall Mall
One still hears the name of this street pronounced ‘Pell Mell’, though my impression is that this doesn’t happen as often as it did some 40-50 years ago.
The Mall is normally pronounced with a short, front ‘a’ (pal, Hal) though substitution of the long, back ‘a’ (call, ball) is sometimes heard.
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In the U.S. there is a brand of cigarettes called Pall Mall — I can remember back in the days when tobacco advertising was still allowed on television how I used to wonder why the announcer always called them “Pell Mell” cigarettes when the name was obviously “Pall Mall” — My father, who had spent a few months in England during the build-up to the Normandy invasion in WWII tried to explain that that was the way they pronounced it in England.
Sometimes candy cigarettes (can you imagine that today!) would be labelled “Pell Mell”
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playing at Peslemesle
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Brewster’s ref:appears to be lingua francka? for what is worth. Here=
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wulfric/nicot/adresses_p.htm
(53) -
pell mell/pall mall
The OED prefers to differentiate between “pall mall” the game, the mallet and the location in London, and “pell-mell” the sense of disorder and confusion. Even within this seeming clarity a sense of spelling chaos reigns. This is perhaps traceable to the foreign derivation of the words themselves. The OED says that Pesle mesle is “obs. form of pell-mell.” then points on to two definitions of “pell mell”. The first is a sense of confusion and the second is “pell mell, obs. form of pall-mall”. By the way two entries also exist for “pall mall”, one being the game, etc. as above and the “obs. form of pell-mell”.
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no doubt: thanks for the update; a pun by SP if he ‘writ’ it or a tongue in cheek by L&M: my limited reading of the liguae leads me to all hell broke loose for the poem?
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re: Peslemesle/Pelemele
Sam made an appearance in this week’s (11 Dec. 04) issue of Michael Quinion’s excellent newsletter, World Wide Words. Here’s the entry:
4. Weird Words: Pall-mall
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An old outdoor game.Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary for 2 April 1661: “So I into St.
James’s Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pelemele, the
first time that ever I saw the sport.” Its name was more usually
spelled “pall-mall”, but he wrote it as he heard it in upper-class
speech. Pepys saw it played where London’s Pall Mall now runs (the
game was the direct origin of the street name) but the course was
shifted later that same year, it is said because dust from royal
carriages disrupted games. The new course was about 800 yards (740
metres) long, laid out where The Mall now lies.Pall-mall seems to have been a cross between croquet and golf,
using a mallet and a boxwood ball a foot (30 cms) in diameter. The
players drove the ball along the course by taking immense swings at
it with the mallet. To end the game they then had to shoot the ball
through a suspended hoop at one end. The person who required the
fewest shots won. The name literally means “ball and mallet” and
comes via the obsolete French “pallemaille” from Italian
“pallamaglio” (“palla”, a ball + “maglio”, a mallet).Some writers have sought a connection between “pall-mall” and
“pell-mell”, the latter meaning something that happens in a rushed,
confused, or disorderly manner, in part because of Pepys’s spelling
and in part because of the supposed nature of the game. But this
has a quite different source: French “p -
And for a picture…
http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/april/images/pall_mall.jpg
