16 ғасырдағы доп пен таяқша ойыны

Mallet & ball game
the 16th century game

Pall mall, paille maille, palle maille, pell mell, or palle malle ('/p//æ//l/'/m//æ//l///, '/p//ɛ//l//'//m//ɛ//l///, /alsoUS/'/p//ɔː//l/'/m//ɔː//l///) is a lawn game (though primarily played on earth surfaces rather than grass) that was mostly played in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is considered a precursor to croquet.

Related to Italian trucco (also known as lawn billiards or trucks in English) and similar games, pall mall is an early modern development from jeu de mail, a French form of ground billiards. The name comes from the Italian pallamaglio, which literally means 'ball mallet', ultimately derived from Latin palla, meaning 'ball', and malleus meaning 'maul, hammer, or mallet'. An alternative etymology has been suggested, from Middle French pale mail or 'straw mallet', in reference to target hoops being made of bound straw.

It was played in a long alley with an iron hoop suspended over the ground at the end. The object was to strike a boxwood ball of unknown circumference (a modern croquet ball is normally in diameter, which equates to approx , in circumference) with a heavy wooden mallet, down the alley and through the hoop with the fewest hits possible. Many references tell us that the ball was about in diameter. However, it is known that this is not correct, as a ball of that size would be far, far too heavy to lift to a high height with a small mallet. Note the ball in the engraving. It is thought that the ball was likely in the region of or slightly larger. It differed from trucco especially in its more extreme length of playing area, suggesting a closer relationship to golf than other derivatives of ground billiards. Pall mall was popular in Italy, France and Scotland, and spread to England and other parts of Western Europe in the 16th century. The name refers not only to the game, but also to the mallet used and the alley in which it was played. Many cities still have long straight roads or promenades which evolved from the alleys in which the game was played. Such in London are Pall Mall and the Mall, in Hamburg the Palmaille, in Paris the Rue du Mail, the Avenue du Mail in Geneva, and in Utrecht the Maliebaan. When the game fell out of fashion, some of these "pall malls" evolved into shopping areas, hence the modern name of shopping centres in North America—shopping malls—while others evolved into grassed, shady promenades, still called malls today.

Pall mall features heavily in Julia Quinn's Regency romance novel The Viscount Who Loved Me and its subsequent second epilogue. The second season of the Netflix series Bridgerton, based on Quinn's novel, prominently features a game of pall mall as an annual tradition for the siblings of the eponymous family. Because of the series' popularity, department store John Lewis reported a 90% spike in the sales of croquet sets, the modern equivalent of pall mall.