Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/239

 and Sentiments. 219 modern backgammon, or rather, we fhould perhaps fay, that the game of backgammon, as now played, is one of the games played on the tables. In the manufcript laft quoted (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii.) the figure of the board is given to illuftrate a very curious treatife on the game of tables. vVwW vVvVvV /WVW^ No. 154. A Table-Board {Backgammon) of the Fourteenth Century. written in Latin, in the fourteenth, or even perhaps in the thirteenth, century. The writer begins by informing ns, that " there are many games at tables with dice, of which the firft is the long game, and is the game of the Englifli, and it is common, and played as follows" {multi funt ludi ad talulas cum taxiUis, quorum primus eft lotigus ludus, et eft ludus Anglicorum, et eft communis, et eft talis naturce), meaning, I prefume, that it was the game ufually played in England. From the directions given for playing it, this game feems to have had a clofe general refemblance to backgammon. The writer of the treatife fays that it was played with three dice, or with two dice, in which latter cafe they counted fix at each throw for the third dice. In fome of the other games defcribed here, two dice only were ufed. We learn from this treatife the Englifli terms for two modes of winning at the " long game" of tables — the one being called " lympoldyng," the other " lurchyngj" and a perfon lofmg by the former was faid to be " Iym]H)Ided." The writer