Passadoc Gazette – No 137

... And comes back in memory, Caesar's beautiful anger who – when he had the point – accuses the shooter of having taken four steps to shoot instead of the three steps allowed! [Extract from Fanny – 1932, Marcel Pagnol).

The ball game would have been created in Gaul. It takes its full development in the Renaissance when the nobility takes over as it does the bilboquet and the palm game (ancestor tennis). Why was gambling forbidden to the people? History is hardly precise...

What is known is that the ban was never fully respected and that the game spread throughout France!

New small loan* to Marcel Pagnol :
Another memory of Aubagne is the part of balls under the plane trees of the Cours. My father, among other giants, made prodigious leaps, and threw a mass of iron at unimaginable distances. Sometimes there were great applause, then the giants always ended up fighting, because of a string that they were pulling hands, but they never fought.

In Ferragus (1833), Balzac writes:
[...] This newcomer walked nicely with the piggy, a little ball that serves as a focal point, and constitutes the interest of the party; he leaned against a tree when the pig stopped; Then, with the same attention that a dog lends to his master's gestures, he looked at the balls flying in the air or rolling down.

In 1907, Jules Hugues – a Provencal champion and rheumatism-perclusive who gradually prevented him from playing his favourite sport – drew a circle on the ground: innovations in rules, as the player had to place himself at the centre of this circle, throw his ball without momentum, and above all keep his feet together.

Thus the petanque is born [pe → foot and tanca → stake], « paws », feet anchored to the ground ».

– Where is our ball game?

Patience... here he is!

Jeanne Monin