Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/489

BALL. with another in the centre to hold hy and get the necessary impetus. These were thrown and twirled roniid the legs of a distant and Ileeing animal, hringing it to earth.

As an aid to outdoor activities and sports the hall claims a vciicralde antiquity. Thus, one of the most heautiful episodes in the Odyssey is the description of Nausicaa and her maidens, in which, as rendered by Pope, —

"O'er the p:reen mead the sportive virp:ins play. Their shininiur veils unbouud — along; the skies, Tos't and retoe't the ball alternate flies."

The hall games of the Greeks came to be much valued as a means of giving grace and elasticity to the tigure, and in the special rooms provided for them in the gymnasiums they were played almost daily by persons of all ages and ranks. A teaclii'r {pilicrepus) was in attendance, and certain rules and gradations of the exercise were observed, according to the physical condition of the player. The Romans also practiced ball- plaving'in connection with their baths, but it never assumed the importance attached to it by the Gi'eeks. Of the various kinds of balls used liy them, the commonest were the pila, a handb.i'll stuffed with hair, and the follis, a large, inflated ski like a football. There were several recoguizt games, vaguely resembling liandball and foo '1 ; and in the Byzantine period a game distinctly similar to the modern polo was played on /orsebaek by the nobles.

Ball-playing seems to have been of great an- tiquity in the west of Europe also. In the Six- teenth Century it was in great favor in the courts of princes, especially in Italy and France. Houses were built for playing in all weathers, and in gardens long alleys were laid out for the purj>ose, the names of which still adhere to many localities. Thus, one of the most famous streets in London takes its name from the Ital- ian palla, a ball, and maglia, a mallet — the game thus denoted being described in Blount's 01os liin (1650) :

"Pale-maille: a game wherein a round bowl is with a mallet struck through a high arch of iron (standing at either end of an alley), which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the niuubcr agreed on, wins. This game was hereto- fore used in the long alley, near Saint James's, and vulgarly called pell-mell."

From the jeu-de-paume of the Middle Ages came the modern tennis, racquets, and lawn ten- nis. The origin of football is equally remote. II has been discovered in regions as far apart as the Faroe Islands in the north, New Zealand in the south, and the Philippines in the tropics. A peculiar kind of game with an inflated ball was played by the Indians of the -Amazon: they threw it in the air, and shot at it from opposite directions with blunt arrows. The game of iRcrosse originated with the North American In- dians, and evidently could have had no connec- tion with the Oriental games, though it is not unlike them in several respects. But in all these questions of origins, the historical data are so meagre and the modifying influences of various games upon one another have been so general, that the true history of few games can he com- pletely told. Besides the many famous games of universal acceptance in which the ball is the prime factor, there are many less known sports, popular in certain localities, which are in the same way dependent upon it. The Frenchmen play the game of the hammer, hitting a ball along the highways: the Italians play pnllone, by striking the ball with a rubljer casing worn over the hand. The Spaniards are devoted to their fronton, which is akin to handball. Even the Eskimos have their ball-game to while away the tedium of the long winter; and mar- bles are too universal to be restricted to any locality or period. See Ba.seball; FooxnALL; Tennis ; Basket Ball.

BALL. Ammunition for fire-arms or ord- nance. Before the era of hollow or elongated shells and bullets, all projectiles were solid and spherical. The term ball ammunition or ball- cartridge, however, is still used as a distinction from blank ammunition. In military pyro- techny, 'balls' in many varieties are used, either to give light, produce dense smoke, or diffuse suffocating odors. In these latter respects, how- ever, they are, under modern conditions, rarely if ever used. See Ammunition: Ordnance; and Projectiles.

BALL, John ( ?-13Sl). An English preacher, well known for his connection with the Wat Tyler Insurrection in 1381. It was Ball who preached from the famous text:

"When .dani dalf, and Eve span, Who was thanne a gentilman?"

He was executed at Saint Albans on July 15, 1381. See Tyler's Rebellion.

BALL, Sir Robert Stawell (1840 — ). An English astronomer. He was educated at Trin- ity College, Dublin, and after holding svieeess- ively many important official and university positions, became professor of geometry and as- tronomy at the University of Cambridge. He has written Elements of Astronomy (1880); The >^io>-y of the Heavens (1885); The Story of the Sun (1894); and Great Astronomers (1805), besides many magazine articles, essays, lectures, and reviews. He was knighted in 1880. In 1902 he visited the United States, and ad- dressed several public or semi-public meetings.

BALL, Thomas (1819—). An American sculptor, born in Charlestown, !Mass. In early life he was a singer, and distinguished himself as a basso in Elijah, but soon began painting miniatures and portraits. In 1852 he made busts of Jenny Lind and Daniel Webster, and a life- sized statue of the latter, and then spent many years in Florence. Italy. He made the Ijronze equestrian statue of Washington in the Boston Public Garden, the bronze of Webster in Cen- tral Park, New York, and the group "Emancipa- tion," in Washington, D. C. He publislied My Threescore Years and Ten (Boston, 1891).

BAL'LAD (OE. and OF. ialade, Fr. bal- lade, dancing song, from Late Lat. and It. bal- lare, to dance, from Gk. /3aA/l('fc(v, ballisein, to dance; ef. ball, ballet). A versified narrative, in a simple, popular, and often rude style, of some valorous exploit, or some tragic or touching incident. Indeed, as far as subject is concerned, the I'allad is a species of minor epic. It is com- paratively short, the story being circumscribed, and not embracing a combination of events, as the plan of the grand epic does. There can be little doubt that the liallail has been the earliest form of poetry among all nations, and that the earlier epics or heroic poems of the higher kind, such as the Vid or the Nibelungenlied, grew out of such simple beginnings. The old ballads were