Hailes (ball Game) - History

History

In the 18th and 19th centuries, hails referred to the goals in several varieties of hand- and foot-ball. Games such as hail-ba' and hand' an' hail were played in various parts of Scotland. The latter was a game common in Dumfries-shire. According to Jamieson, "two hails, or dules, are fixed on, at about the distance of four hundred yards from each other, or as much farther as the players can agree on. The two parties then place themselves in the middle between the two goals, or dules, and one of the persons, taking a soft elastic ball about the size of a man's fist, tosses it into the air and as it falls strikes it with his palm towards his antagonists. The object of the game is for either party to drive the ball beyond the goal which lies before them, while their opponents do all in their power to prevent this."

In his poems of 1804, W. Tarras tells in verse of such a game:

The hails are set an' on they scud

...

and

The hails is wun; they warsle hame

The best they can for fobbin'

The game just about died out during the 19th century with the rise in interest in football. It is known to have survived only in the Royal High School and the Edinburgh Academy.

In James Trotter's book on the Royal High School, published in 1911, the game is referred to as "the distinctively school game of Clacken, now alas extinct! Less than thirty years ago no High School boy considered his equipment complete unless the wooden clacken hung to his wrist as he went and came".

Though it was played in the Junior School of the Edinburgh Academy until the 1960s, it had by then long since died out in the Senior School as a regular activity. However, as part of the centenary celebrations of the school in 1924, the Seventh year took on the Ephors in an exhibition match and this is now an annual event occurring on the last Wednesday or Tuesday of the Summer Term and is now quite a spectacle which the whole school turns out to watch.