Hurling the Silver ball
There was a time when the silver ball was part of the tradition of may Cornish Villages, sadly now only two St Ives and St Columb Major continue the practise. The hurling ball, the size of an orange made from applewood coated with silver goes flying through the streets of St Ives on Feast Monday in February (St Ives Feast takes place on the nearest Sunday to the 3 rd.. February ) and at St Columb on Shrove Tuesday and the Saturday of the following week.
At St Columb the struggle is a physical battle between " Town and Country " with the shops in the town barricading their windows and doors for the start of the scrum at 4.30 p.m. The ball is thrown to the crowd from the market square the objective to carry it into either the town or country goals set some two miles apart or if this is not possible the ball may be carried over the Parish boundary . At 8.00 p.m. a winner returns to declare a win for Town or Country.
1999 Saw the re-introduction of the large style Motto
'Town and Country do your Best'The Cornish Historian Richard Carew wrote on Cornish Hurling:
`Two bushes are pitched in the ground eight or twelve feet asunder, directly against which at a distance ten or twelve yards apart two more bushes, in like manner, which are called goals.The hurlers to goals are bound to observe these orders or Laws:
ln contending for the ball, if a man's body touches the ground, and he cries `Hold' and delivers the ball, he is not to be further pressed.
That the hurler must deal no foreball, or throw it to any partner standing nearer the goal than himself. In dealing the ball, if any of the adverse party can catch it flying...the property of it is thereby transferred to the catching party; and so assailants become defendants, and defendant assailants.
References
Hurling at St. Columb and in Cornwall by Ivan Rabey. Paperback (10 February, 1972) Lodenek P; ISBN: 0902899112
Sir Richard Carew, Survey of Cornwall, 1602, repub. New York, 1969, pp. 147-149.
Images of Richard Carew's work on Hurling (http://victoria.tc.ca/~tgodwin/duncanweb/documents/survey_of_cornwall.html)
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