Quidditch Through the Ages   ::   Роулинг Джоан Кэтлин

Chapter Two

Ancient Broom Games



Broom sports emerged almost as soon as broomsticks were sufficiently advanced to allow fliers to turn corners and vary their speed and height. Early wizarding writings and paintings give us some idea of the games our ancestors played. Some of these no longer exist; others have survived or evolved into the sports we know today.

The celebrated annual broom race of Sweden dates from the tenth century. Fliers race from Kopparberg to Arjeplog, a distance of slightly over three hundred miles. The course runs straight through a dragon reservation and the vast silver trophy is shaped like a Swedish Short‑Snout. Nowadays this is an international event and wizards of all nationalities congregate at Kopparberg to cheer the starters, then Apparate to Arjeplog to congratulate the survivors.

The famous painting Gьnther der Gewalttдtige ist derGewinner ('Gunther the Violent is the Winner'), dated 1105, shows the ancient German game of Stichstock. a twenty‑foot‑high pole was topped with an inflated dragon bladder One player on a broomstick had the job of protecting this bladder. The bladder‑guardian was tied to the pole by a rope around his or her waist, so that he or she could not fly further than ten feet away from it. The rest of the players would take it in turns to fly at the bladder and attempt to puncture it with the specially sharpened ends of their brooms. The bladder‑guardian was allowed to use his or her wand to repel these attacks. The game ended when the bladder was successfully punctured, or the bladder‑guardian had either succeeded in hexing all opponents out of the running or collapsed from exhaustion. Stichstock died out in the fourteenth century.

In Ireland die game of Aingingein flourished, the subject of many an Irish ballad (the legendary wizard Fingal the Fearless is alleged to have been an Aingingein champion). One by one the players would take the Dom, or ball (actually the gallbladder of a goat), and speed through a series of burning barrels set high in the air on stilts. The Dom was to be thrown through the final barrel. The player who succeeded in getting the Dom through the last barrel in the fastest time, without having caught fire on the way, was the winner.

Scotland was the birthplace of what is probably the most dangerous of all broom games — Creaothceann.