History
Stoolball is strongly associated with Easter, and some historians theorise that the game was a Christian adaption of pagan ball games strongly associated with fertility rites. This is evidenced throughout early literature where the game is also strongly associated with romance and courtship, and in Fletcher and Shakespeare's comedy The Two Noble Kinsmen, the phrase "playing stool ball" is used as a euphemism for sexual behaviour.
Stoolball makes an appearance in the dictionary of Samuel Johnson, where it is defined as a game played by driving a ball from stool to stool.
Read more about this topic: Stoolball
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