History
Marbles and its games are ancient. Marbles games are known to have been played in the civilizations of the Nile Valley and the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and then spread to Africa, Greece, Sicily, and Rome. Small balls of clay, flint, or stone have been dug up in the tombs of the pharaohs and in caves in Europe. Pre-Christian terra cottas and other statuary often depict children playing at knucklebones or astragals, which are thought to be forerunners of marbles games. Marbles also have been discovered in the digs of the Mound Builder Indians of Mississippi, and the Aztecs played a form of marbles.
Some biblical scholars suggest that David smote Goliath with a marble. Ovid mentions a marbles-like game played with polished nuts. The Roman legions brought marbles to Britain and to northern Europe and the Germanic tribes. English historians of games mention marbles as being played by the Emperor Augustus and trace their existence to Elizabethan times. Good Friday in England once was celebrated as "Marbles Day," although such frivolity was forbidden at Oxford and at the Great Hall at Westminster.
From Britain the movement of marble games coincided with the spread of empire. English marbles crossed the Atlantic to America, and the marbles played in the United States are derivations of English games such as Taws, Cherry Put, Boss-Out, and Lag. George Washington was a marbles player, as were Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln was adept at a game called Old Bowler.
Games
The most famous marbles game is Ringer. Thirteen target marbles are placed in the form of a cross in the middle of a ring 10 feet (3 meters) in diamether. Two shooters compete by "knuckling down" at the edge of the ring and attempting to knock target marbles out of the circle. The first to get seven out wins. If a player knocks one out, he gets another shot, and so on.
In the national tournament held each year, there are both girl and boy champions. Each winner receives a genuine agate shooter, a rare item made only in Germany.
Other games are less structured but just as competitive. Some versions of Ringer use squares or oblongs as well as circles, or holes dug in the ground, and the stakes are always your competitors' marbles. Some games are played like miniature golf. In gambling games, players try to roll marbles into tiny openings cut into the side of a box, with the "house" collecting all misses and paying good odds for all hits. These varieties, traditionally called "keepsies," remain popular in many parts of America.
