NINEPINS
(in occitan Tired quilhas with the malhet)
This Gascon play gains all the
votes and is found with each festival.
With not confusing with the skittles of nine or 8 that you can admire in the wine storehouses of the Bouscassé castle.
The principle is simple: TO LEAVE A SKITTLE.
One viellanais truste for some time the victories!
On http://campsis.free.fr/archives01/quilles2204.htm
To come in Viella for the festival or better, for the woodland saint will enable you to admire the good local players and to take to you with the play for perhaps gaining a bottle of pacherenc.
Oldest testimonys of ball and ninepins go up in old Egypt. The ninepins to the mallet practised in Gers are only one of the alternatives. One finds of them the first traces in XVe century. With the origin, this play was practised individually, and of strong settings of money and sometimes of cattle were concerned. Thus in 1956, a peasant lost his single pair of oxen. The prefect of Gers, moved by this mishap, had then taken a decree for prohibiting this practice. Gascon inheritance, the "skittle with the mallet" however is started again in 1972, under the impulse of the departmental Federation of the rural hearths of Gers.
Since it was reintroduced in Gers at the beginning of the Seventies, its practice extended in seven departments from the area from South-west. Today, the play of "skittles to the mallet" is affiliated with the French Federation of bowling and sport of skittles. Many meetings are organized during all the summer.
The principle
The adventure playground (cement, bituminizes, beaten ground...) is made up of a
11 m length perimeter over a minimal width from 3 to 4 Mr. the material is
composed of three large (55 cm) and of three small skittles of wood (50 cm), and
of three mallets of wood (length: 30 cm; diameter: 7 cm). The six skittles (the
three large ones behind, the three small ones in front) are placed in two lines
apart 30 cm on the pitèr, a small surface out of cement. The launching pad is
located at 10 m of the first skittles: the throw of mallet is done without dash
from this station. Each of the three players of the team launches the mallet in
turn. The object of the play consists in keeping a skittle, whatever it is, in
order to mark 1 upright point, in one, two or three jets of mallet. The fall of
the six skittles cancels the jet as well as the series of the three shootings of
the team. The gaining team is that which arrives the first at 11 points.
For more details, to see the site of the federation of bowling http://www.federationbowling.org/
OR http://www.crdp-toulouse.fr/docenligne/article.php3?id_article=289
For any complementary question write with viella@online.fr
