Paille-maille is a lawn game

Lawn game

A lawn game is any outdoor game that can be played on a lawn. Many games that are traditionally played on a pitch are marketed as "lawn games" for home use in a front or back yard.Common lawn games include:*Horseshoes*Lawn darts*Croquet*Cornhole*Bocce...

 that was mostly played in the 16th and 17th centuries, a precursor to croquet

Croquet

Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...

.

History

Related to Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 trucco (also known as lawn billiards or trucks in English

Modern English

Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...

) and similar games, paille-maille is an early modern

Early modern period

In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...

 development from jeu de mail

Jeu de mail

Jeu de mail or jeu de maille is a now-obsolete lawn game originating in the 15th century and mostly played in France, surviving in some locales into the 20th century...

, a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 form of ground billiards.

The name comes from the Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 pallamaglio, which literally means "ball

Ball

A ball is a round, usually spherical but sometimes ovoid, object with various uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for simpler activities, such as catch, marbles and juggling...

-mallet

Mallet

A mallet is a kind of hammer, usually of rubber,or sometimes wood smaller than a maul or beetle and usually with a relatively large head.-Tools:Tool mallets come in different types, the most common of which are:...

", ultimately derived from Latin palla and malleus meaning "ball" and "maul

Maul

A splitting maul also known as a block buster, or block splitter is a heavy, long-handled hammer used for splitting a piece of wood along its grain. One side of its head is like a sledgehammer, and the other side is like an axe.- Wedged mauls :...

, hammer

Hammer

A hammer is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving nails, fitting parts, forging metal and breaking up objects. Hammers are often designed for a specific purpose, and vary widely in their shape and structure. The usual features are a handle and a head,...

 or mallet", respectively. An alternative etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

 has been suggested, from Middle French

Middle French

Middle French is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from 1340 to 1611. It is a period of transition during which:...

 pale-mail or "straw-mallet", in reference to target hoops being made of bound straw.

History of Pall Mall in England

In 1661 Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 wrote in his diary, "To St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pelemele, the first time that I ever saw the sport". In his book entitled "The sports and pastimes of the people of England" Joseph Strutt

Joseph Strutt

Joseph Strutt may refer to:*Joseph Strutt , English engraver and antiquary*Joseph Strutt , Derby textile manufacturer and philanthropist*Joseph Strutt , British soldier and MP...

 describes the way Pall Mall was played in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in 1611:
"'Pale-maille is a game wherein a round box ball is struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron, which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed upon, wins.' It is to be observed, that there are two of these arches, that is 'one at either end of the alley.' The game of mall was a fashionable amusement in the reign of Charles the Second, and the walk in Saint James's Park, now called the Mall, received its name from having been appropriated to the purpose of playing at mall, where Charles himself and his courtiers frequently exercised themselves in the practice of this pastime."

Whilst the name Pall Mall and various games bearing this name may have been played elsewhere (France and Italy) the description above suggests that the croquet games were certainly popular in England as early as 1601. Some early sources refer to Pall Mall being played over a large distance (as in golf), however an image in Joseph Strutt's 1801 book The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England clearly shows a croquet-like game (balls on ground, hoop, bats and peg) being played over a short (garden sized) distance. Interestingly this image describes the game as 'A very curious ancient pastime' and indeed a Saxon origin for this game has been suggested.

The game was still known in the early nineteenth century, as is proved by its reference in many English dictionaries. In Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

's 1828 dictionary his definition of "Pall mall" clearly describes a game with similarities to modern croquet: "A play in which the ball is struck with a mallet through an iron ring".

Game play

It was played in a long alley

Alley

An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane found in urban areas, often for pedestrians only, which usually runs between or behind buildings. In older cities and towns in Europe, alleys are often what is left of a medieval street network, or a right of way or ancient footpath in an urban setting...

 with an iron hoop suspended over the ground at the end. The object was to strike a boxwood ball of about 1 foot (30 cm) in circumference

Circumference

The circumference is the distance around a closed curve. Circumference is a special perimeter.-Circumference of a circle:The circumference of a circle is the length around it....

 (a modern croquet

Croquet

Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...

 ball is normally 3 5/8 inches—approx 92.1 mm—in diameter, which equates to approx 11 2/5 inches, 28.9 cm, in circumference) with a heavy wooden mallet, down the alley and through the hoop with the fewest hits possible. It differed from trucco especially in its more extreme length of playing area, suggesting a closer relationship to golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 than other derivatives of ground billiards.

Paille-maille was popular in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, and spread to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and other parts of Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

 in the 17th 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

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 are Pall Mall

Pall Mall, London

Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...

 and the Mall

The Mall (London)

The Mall in central London is the road running from Buckingham Palace at its western end to Admiralty Arch and on to Trafalgar Square at its eastern end. It then crosses Spring Gardens, which was where the Metropolitan Board of Works and, for a number of years, the London County Council were...

, in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 the Palmaille, in Paris the Rue du Mail, and in Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

 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 mall

Shopping mall

A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...

s—while others evolved into grassed, shady promenades, still called malls today.