Praise for Quidditch Through the Ages 2 страница

since they started in 1985 – which is the equivalent of over 174

million pounds or thirty-four million Galleons).

Everyone involved in getting this book to you, from the author to

the publisher to the paper suppliers, printers, binders, and

booksellers, contributed their time, energy, and materials free or at

a reduced cost, making it possible for twenty percent of the retail

vii

sales price less taxes from the sale of this book to go to a fund set

up in Harry Potter’s name by Comic Relief U. K. and J. K.

Rowling. This fund was designed specifically to help children in

need throughout the world. By buying this book – and I would

advise you to buy it, because if you read it too long without handing

over money you will find yourself the object of a Thief’s Curse –

you too will be contributing to this magical mission.

I would be deceiving my readers if I said that this explanation

made Madam Pince happy about handing over a library book to

Muggles. She suggested several alternatives, such as telling the

people from Comic Relief U. K. that the library had burned down,

or simply pretending that I had dropped dead without leaving

instructions. When I told her that on the whole I preferred my

original plan, she reluctantly agreed to hand over the book, though

at the point when it came to let go of it, her nerve failed her and I

was forced to prise her fingers individually from the spine.

Though I have removed the usual library book spells from this

volume, I cannot promise that every trace has gone. Madam Pince

has been known to add unusual jinxes to the books in her care. I

myself doodled absentmindedly on a copy of Theories of

Transubstantial Transfiguration last year and next moment found the

book beating me fiercely about the head. Please be careful how you

treat this book. Do not rip out the pages. Do not drop it in the

bath. I cannot promise that Madam Pince will not swoop down on

you, wherever you are, and demand a heavy fine.

All that remains is for me to thank you for supporting Comic

Relief U. K. and to beg Muggles not to try playing Quidditch at

home; it is, of course, an entirely fictional sport and nobody really

plays it. May I also take this opportunity to wish Puddlemere

United the best of luck next season.

viii

Chapter One

The Evolution of the Flying

Broomstick

o spell yet devised enables wizards to fly unaided in

-218human form. Those few Animagi who transform

into winged creatures may enjoy flight, but they are a

rarity. The witch or wizard who finds him- or herself

transfigured into a bat may take to the air, but, having a

bat’s brain, they are sure to forget where they want to go

the moment they take flight. Levitation is commonplace,

but our ancestors were not content with hovering five feet

from the ground. They wanted more. They wanted to fly

like birds, but without the inconvenience of growing

feathers.

We are so accustomed these days to the fact that every

wizarding household in Britain owns at least one flying

broomstick that we rarely stop to ask ourselves why.

Why should the humble broom have become the one object

legally allowed as a means of wizarding transport? Why

did we in the West not adopt the carpet so beloved of our

Eastern brethren? Why didn’t we choose to produce flying

barrels, flying armchairs, flying bathtubs – why brooms?

Shrewd enough to see that their Muggle neighbours

would seek to exploit their powers if they knew their full

extent, witches and wizards kept themselves to

themselves long before the International Statute of

Wizarding Secrecy came into effect. If they were to keep

a means of flight in their houses, it would necessarily be

something discreet, something easy to hide. The

broomstick was ideal for this purpose; it required no

explanation, no excuse if found by Muggles, it was easily

portable and inexpensive. Nevertheless, the first brooms

bewitched for flying purposes had their drawbacks.

Records show that witches and wizards in Europe were

using flying broomsticks as early as A.D. 962. A German

illuminated manuscript of this period shows three

warlocks dismounting from their brooms with looks of

exquisite discomfort on their faces. Guthrie Lochrin, a

Scottish wizard writing in 1107, spoke of the “splinter-

filled buttocks and bulging piles” he suffered after a short

broom ride from Montrose to Arbroath.

A medieval broomstick on display in the Museum of

Quidditch in London gives us an insight into Lochrin’s

discomfort (see Fig. A). A thick knotty handle of

unvarnished ash, with hazel twigs bound crudely to one

end, it is neither comfortable nor aerodynamic. The

charms placed upon it are similarly basic: It will only

move forwards at one speed; it will go up, down, and stop.

As wizarding families in those days made their own

brooms, there was enormous variation in the speed,

comfort, and handling of the transport available to them.

By the twelfth century, however, wizards had learned to

barter services, so that a skilled maker of brooms could

exchange them for the potions his neighbour might make

better than himself. Once broomsticks became more

comfortable, they were flown for pleasure rather than

merely used as a means of getting from point A to point B.

Chapter Two

Ancient Broom Games

room sports emerged almost as soon as broomsticks

-232were 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 raceof 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 der Gewinner

(“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 the 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.

The game features in a tragic Gaelic poem of the eleventh

century, the first verse of which says, in translation:

The players assembled, twelve fine, hearty men,

They strapped on their cauldrons, stood poised to fly,

At the sound of the horn they were swiftly airborne

But ten of their number were fated to die.

Creaothceann players each wore a cauldron strapped to

the head. At the sound of the horn or drum, up to a

hundred charmed rocks and boulders that had been

hovering a hundred feet above the ground began to fall

towards the earth. The Creaothceann players zoomed

around trying to catch as many rocks as possible in their

cauldrons. Considered by many Scottish wizards to be

the supreme test of manliness and courage, Creaothceann

enjoyed considerable popularity in the Middle Ages,

despite the huge number of fatalities that resulted from it.

The game was made illegal in 1762, and though Magnus

“Dent-Head” Macdonald spearheaded a campaign for its

reintroduction in the 1960s, the Ministry of Magic

refused to lift the ban.

Shuntbumpswas popular in Devon, England. This

was a crude form of jousting, the sole aim being to knock

as many other players as possible off their brooms, the last

person remaining on their broom winning.

Swivenhodgebegan in Herefordshire. Like

Stichstock, this involved an inflated bladder, usually a

pig’s. Players sat backwards on their brooms and batted

the bladder backwards and forwards across a hedge with

the brush ends of their brooms. The first person to miss

gave their opponent a point. First to reach fifty points was

the winner.

Swivenhodge is still played in England, though it has

never achieved much widespread popularity; Shuntbumps

survives only as a children’s game. At Queerditch Marsh,

however, a game had been created that would one day

become the most popular in the wizarding world.

Chapter Three

The Game From Queerditch Marsh

e owe our knowledge of the rude beginnings of

-232Quidditch to the writings of the witch Gertie

Keddle, who lived on the edge of Queerditch Marsh in the

eleventh century. Fortunately for us, she kept a diary, now

in the Museum of Quidditch in London. The excerpts

below have been translated from the badly spelled Saxon

of the original.

Tuesday. Hot. That lot from across the marsh have been at it

again. Playing a stupid game on their broomsticks. A big

leather ball landed in my cabbages. I hexed the man who

came for it. I’d like to see him fly with his knees on back to

front, the great hairy hog.

Tuesday. Wet. Was out on the marsh picking nettles.

Broomstick idiots playing again. Watched for a bit from

behind a rock. They’ve got a new ball. Throwing it to each

other and trying to stick it in trees at either end of the

marsh. Pointless rubbish.

Tuesday. Windy. Gwenog came for nettle tea, then invited

me out for a treat. Ended up watching those numbskulls

playing their game on the marsh. That big Scottish warlock

from up the hill was there. Now they’ve got two big, heavy

rocks flying around trying to knock them all off their

brooms. Unfortunately didn’t happen while I was watching.

Gwenog told me she often played herself. Went home in

disgust.

These extracts reveal much more than Gertie Keddle

could have guessed, quite apart from the fact that she only

knew the name of one of the days of the week. Firstly, the

ball that landed in her cabbage patch was made of leather,

as is the modern Quaffle – naturally, the inflated bladder

used in other broom games of the period would be

difficult to throw accurately, particularly in windy

conditions. Secondly, Gertie tells us that the men were

“trying to stick it in trees at either end of the marsh” –

apparently an early form of goal-scoring. Thirdly, she gives

us a glimpse of the forerunners of Bludgers. It is

immensely interesting that there was a “big Scottish

warlock” present. Could he have been a Creaothceann

player? Was it his idea to bewitch heavy rocks to zoom

dangerously around the pitch, inspired by the boulders

used in his native game?

We find no further mention of the sport played on

Queerditch Marsh until a century later, when the wizard

Goodwin Kneen took up his quill to write to his

Norwegian cousin Olaf. Kneen lived in Yorkshire, which

demonstrates the spread of the sport throughout Britain

in the hundred years after Gertie Keddle first witnessed

it. Kneen’s letter is deposited in the archives of the

Norwegian Ministry of Magic.

Dear Olaf,

How are you? I am well, though Gunhilda had got a

touch of dragon pox.

We enjoyed a spirited game of Kwidditch last Saturday

night, though poor Gunhilda was not up to playing Catcher,

and we had to use Radulf the blacksmith instead. The team

from Ilkley played well though was no match for us, for we

had been practising hard all month and scored forty-two

times. Radulf got a Blooder in the head because old Ugga

wasn’t quick enough with his club. The new scoring barrels

worked well. Three at each end on stilts, Oona from the inn

gave us them. She let us have free mead all night because we

won as well. Gunhilda was a bit angry I got back so late. I

had to duck a couple of nasty jinxes but I’ve got my fingers

back now.

I’m sending this with the best owl I’ve got, hope he makes it.

Your cousin,

Goodwin

Here we see how far the game has progressed in a century.

Goodwin’s wife was to have played “Catcher” – probably

the old term for Chaser. The “Blooder” (undoubtedly

Bludger) that hit Radulf the blacksmith should have been

fended off by Ugga, who was obviously playing Beater, as

he was carrying a club. The goals are no longer trees, but

barrels on stilts. One crucial element in the game was still

missing, however: the Golden Snitch. The addition of the

fourth Quidditch ball did not occur until the middle of the

thirteenth century and it came about in a curious manner.

Chapter Four

The Arrival of the Golden Snitch

rom the early 1100s, Snidget-hunting had been

-232popular among many witches and wizards. The

Golden Snidget (see Fig. B) is today a protected species,

but at that time Golden Snidgets were common in northern

Europe, though difficult to detect by Muggles because of

their aptitude at hiding and their very great speed.

The diminutive size of the Snidget, coupled with its

remarkable agility in the air and talent at avoiding

predators, merely added to the prestige of wizards who

caught them. A twelfth-century tapestry preserved in the

Museum of Quidditch shows a group setting out to catch

a Snidget. In the first portion of the tapestry, some

hunters carry nets, others use wands, and still others

attempt to catch the Snidget with their bare hands. The

tapestry reveals the fact that the Snidget was often

crushed by its captor. In the final portion of the tapestry

we see the wizard who caught the Snidget being presented

with a bag of gold.

Snidget-hunting was reprehensible in many ways. Every

right-minded wizard must deplore the destruction of

these peace-loving little birds in the name of sport.

Moreover, Snidget-hunting, which was usually under-

taken in broad daylight, led to more Muggle broomstick

sightings than any other pursuit. The Wizards’ Council of

the time, however, was unable to curb the sport’s

popularity – indeed, it appears that the Council itself saw

little wrong with it, as we shall see.

Snidget-hunting finally crossed paths with Quidditch in

1269 at a game attended by the Chief of the Wizards’

Council himself, Barberus Bragge. We know this because

of the eyewitness account sent by Madam Modesty

Rabnott of Kent to her sister Prudence in Aberdeen (this

letter is also on display in the Museum of Quidditch).

According to Madam Rabnott, Bragge brought a caged

Snidget to the match and told the assembled players that

he would award one hundred and fifty Galleons1 to the

player who caught it during the course of the game.

Madam Rabnott explains what happened next:

The players rose as one into the air, ignoring the

Quaffle and dodging the Blooders. Both Keepers

abandoned the goal baskets and joined the hunt. The

poor little Snidget shot up and down the pitch seeking

a means of escape, but the wizards in the crowd forced

it back with Repelling Spells. Well, Pru, you know

how I am about Snidget-hunting and what I get like

when my temper goes. I ran onto the pitch and

screamed, “Chief Bragge, this is not sport! Let the

Snidget go free and let us watch the noble game of

Cuaditch which we have all come to see!” If you’ll

believe me. Pru, all the brute did was laugh and

throuw the empty birdcage at me. Well, I saw red,

Pru, I really did. When the poor little Snidget flew

1. Equivalent to over a million Galleons today. Whether Chief Bragge

intended to pay or not is a moot point.

My way I did a Summoning Charm. You know how

good my Summoning Charms are, Pru – of course it

was easier for me to aim properly, not being mounted

on a broomstick at the time. The little bird came

zooming into my hand. I stuffed it down the front of

my robes and ran like fury.

Well, they caught me, but not before I’d got out of

the crowds and released the Snidget. Chief Bragge

was very angry and for a moment I thought I’d end

up a horned toad, or worse, but luckily his advisors

calmed him down and I was only fined ten Galleons

for disrupting the game. Of course I’ve never had ten

Galleons in my life, so that’s the old home gone.

I’ll be coming to live with you shortly, luckily they

didn’t take the Hippogriff. And I’ll tell you this,

Pru, Chief Bragge would have lost my vote if I’d

had one.

Your loving sister,

Modesty

Madam Rabnott’s brave action might have saved one

Snidget, but she could not save them all. Chief Bragge’s

idea had forever changed the nature of Quidditch.

Golden Snidgets were soon being released during all

Quidditch games, one player on each team (the Hunter)

having the sole task of catching it. When the bird was

killed, the game was over and the Hunter’s team was

awarded an extra one hundred and fifty points, in

memory of the one hundred and fifty Galleons promised

by Chief Bragge. The crowd undertook to keep the

Snidget on the pitch by using the Repelling Spells

mentioned by Madam Rabnott.

By the middle of the following century, however,

Golden Snidget numbers had fallen so low that the

Wizards’ Council, now headed by the considerably more

enlightened Elfrida Clagg, made the Golden Snidget a

protected species, outlawing both its killing and its use in

Quidditch games. The Modesty Rabnott Snidget

Reservation was founded in Somerset and a substitute for

the bird was frantically sought to enable the game of

Quidditch to proceed.

The invention of the Golden Snitch is credited to the

wizard Bowman Wright of Godric’s Hollow. While

Quidditch teams all over the country tried to find bird

substitutes for the Snidget, Wright, who was a skilled

metal-charmer, set himself to the task of creating a ball

that mimicked the behaviour and flight patterns of the

Snidget. That he succeeded perfectly is clear from the

many rolls of parchment he left behind him on his death

(now in the possession of a private collector), listing the

orders that he had received from all over the country. The

Golden Snitch, as Bowman called his invention, was a

walnut-sized ball exactly the weight of a Snidget. Its

silvery wings had rotational joints like the Snidget’s,

enabling it to change direction with the lightning speed

and precision of its living model. Unlike the Snidget,

however, the Snitch had been bewitched to remain within

the boundaries of the field. The introduction of the

Golden Snitch may be said to have finished the process

begun three hundred years before on Queerditch Marsh.

Quidditch had been truly born.

Chapter Five

Anti-Muggle Precautions

n 1398 the wizard Zacharias Mumps set down the first

-232full description of the game of Quidditch. He began by

emphasising the need for anti-Muggle security while

playing the game: “Choose areas of deserted moorland far

from Muggle habitations and make sure that you cannot

be seen once you take off on your brooms. Muggle-

Repelling Charms are useful if you are setting up a

permanent pitch. It is advisable, too, to play at night.”

We deduce that Mumps’s excellent advice was not

always followed from the fact that the Wizards’ Council

outlawed all Quidditch-playing within fifty miles of towns

in 1362. Clearly the popularity of the game was increasing

rapidly, for the Council found it necessary to amend the

ban in 1368, making it illegal to play within a hundred

miles of a town. In 1419, the Council issued the famously

worded decree that Quidditch should not be played

“anywhere near any place where there is the slightest

chance that a Muggle might be watching or we’ll see how

well you can play whilst chained to a dungeon wall.”

As every school-age wizard knows, the fact that we fly

on broomsticks is probably our worst-kept secret. No

Muggle illustration of a witch is complete without a

broom and however ludicrous these drawings are (for

none of the broomsticks depicted by Muggles could stay

up in the air for a moment), they remind us that we were

careless for too many centuries to be surprised that

broomsticks and magic are inextricably linked in the

Muggle mind.

Adequate security measures were not enforced until the

International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy of 1692 made

every Ministry of Magic directly responsible for the

consequences of magical sports played within their

territories. This subsequently led, in Britain, to the

formation of the Department of Magical Games and

Sports. Quidditch teams that flouted the Ministry

guidelines were henceforth forced to disband. The most

famous instance of this was the Banchory Bangers, a

Scottish team renowned not only for their poor Quidditch

skills but also for their post-match parties. After their

1814 match against the Appleby Arrows (see Chapter

Seven), the Bangers not only allowed their Bludgers to

zoom away into the night, but also set out to capture a

Hebridean Black for their team mascot. Ministry of Magic

representatives apprehended them as they were flying

over Inverness and the Banchory Bangers never played

again.

Nowadays Quidditch teams do not play locally, but

travel to pitches, which have been set up by the

Department of Magical Games and Sports where

adequate anti-Muggle security is maintained. As Zacharias

Mumps so rightly suggested six hundred years ago,

Quidditch pitches are safest on deserted moors.

Chapter Six

Changes in Quidditch Since the

Fourteenth Century

Pitch

Zacharias Mumps describes the fourteenth-century pitch

as oval-shaped, five hundred feet long, and a hundred and

eighty feet wide with a small central circle (approximately

two feet in diameter) in the middle. Mumps tells us that

the referee (or Quijudge, as he or she was then known),

carried the four balls into this central circle while the

fourteen players stood around him. The moment the balls

were released (the Quaffle was thrown by the referee; see

“Quaffle” below), the players raced into the air. The

goalposts in Mumps’s time were still large baskets on

poles, as seen in Fig. C.

In 1620 Quintius Umfraville

wrote a book called The Noble

Sport of Warlocks, which included

a diagram of the seventeenth-

century pitch (see Fig. D). Here

we see the addition of what we

know as “scoring areas” (see

“Rules” below). The baskets on

top of the goalposts were

considerably smaller and higher

than in Mumps’s time.

By 1883 baskets had ceased to

be used for scoring and were

replaced with the goalposts we

use today, an innovation

reported in the Daily Prophet of

the time (see below). The

Quidditch pitch has not altered

since that time.

Bring Back

Our Baskets!

That was the cry heard from Quidditch

players across the nation last night as it

became clear that the Department of

Magical Games and Sports had decided to

burn the baskets used for centuries for goal-