Hoop rolling, also called hoop trundling, is both a sport and a child's game in which a large hoop is rolled along the ground, generally by means of an object wielded by the player. The aim of the game is to keep the hoop upright for long periods of time, or to do various tricks.
Hoop rolling has been documented since antiquity in Africa, Asia and Europe. Played as a target game, it is an ancient tradition widely dispersed among different societies. In Asia, the earliest records date from Ancient China, and in Europe from Ancient Greece.
In the West, the most common materials for the equipment have been wood and metal. Wooden hoops, driven with a stick about one foot long, are struck with the centre of the stick in order to ensure good progress. Metal hoops, instead of being struck, can be guided by a metal hook.
History A version of hoop rolling played as a target game is encountered as an ancient tradition among aboriginal peoples in many parts of the world. The game, known as hoop-and-pole, is ubiquitous throughout most of Africa.
In the Americas, it has been played by a great number of unrelated Native American tribes. The game has exhibited many variations of materials and size of implements and rules of play.Andrew McFarland Davis Indian Games. pp. 44–56. . It is postulated that its wide distribution is a factor of the rich symbolic possibilities of the game, rather than indicating radial diffusion from a single center of invention.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greeks referred to the hoop as the "trochus". Hoop rolling was practiced in the gymnasium, and the prop was also used for tumbling and dance with different techniques.William Smith (1859) A dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Little, Brown, and Co. p. 1168 Although a popular form of recreation, hoop rolling was not featured in competition at the major sports festivals.
Hoops, also called krikoi, were probably made of bronze, iron, or copper, and were driven with a stick called the "elater".Edward M Plummer (1856) Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks. Cambridge, Mass., Lombard & Caustic, Printers. p. 50 The hoop was sized according to the player, as it had to come up to the level of the chest. Greek vases generally show the elater as a short, straight stick. The sport was regarded as healthful, and was recommended by Hippocrates for strengthening weak constitutions."Hippocrates recommended playing with a hoop as a cure for weak people" Even very young children would play with hoops.James Augustus St. John (1878) The history of the manners and customs of ancient Greece. Volume 1. London, J. Murray. p. 148
The hoop held symbolic meanings in Greek myth and culture. Hoop driving is an attribute of Ganymede, often depicted on Greek vase paintings from the 5th century BCE. Images of the hoop are sometimes presented in the context of ancient Greek pederastic tradition.
Ancient Rome and Byzantium
During the Roman Empire, circa 100–300 AD, the Romans learned hoop driving from the Greeks and generally held the sport in high regard.Karl Groos (1901) "Playful Use of the Motor Apparatus". Chapter 2 in The Play of Man, translated by Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York: Appleton: pp. 74–121. "Other rolling toys, such as wheels and hoops, whose motion is kept up by means of continuous striking, offer a very different kind of amusement. The violent running, combining as it does something of the zest of the chase with the pleasure of overcoming a difficulty, forms a delightful compound with the enjoyment of the rolling as such. The Greeks called the hoop trocoVor krikoV. They were rather large, and made of metal studded with tinkling bells and propelled by a metal rod. Ganymede is often represented with such a hoop. The Romans had an extraordinary fondness for this sport, and Ovid, who refers to a teacher of the art of hoop rolling, says in one of his enumerations of the spring games: "Usus equi nunc est, levibus nunc luditur armis, Nunc pila, nunc celeri volvitur orbe trochus." Fouquières cites a passage from Martial about youths rolling hoops on frozen streams. The Latin term for hoop is also "trochus", at times referred to as the "Greek hoop". The stick was known as a "clavis" Thomas Dudley Fosbroke (1843) Encyclopædia of antiquities: and elements of archaeology .... Vol. 2. N3. London : M. A. Nattali. p. 619 or "radius", had the shape of a key, and was made of metal with a wooden handle. Roman hoops were fitted with metal rings that slid freely along the rim. According to Martial, this was done so that the tinkling of the rings would warn passers by of the hoop's approach: "Why do these jingling rings move about upon the rolling wheel? In order that the passers-by may get out of the way of the hoop."(14. CLXIX) He also indicates that the metal tires of wooden cart wheels could be used as hoops: "A wheel must be protected. You make me a useful present. It will be a hoop to children, but to me a tyre for my wheel."(14. CLXVIII)Harris, pp. 136–137 Martial also mentions the sport was practised by Sarmatian boys, who rolled their hoops on the frozen Danube river. According to Strabo, one of the popular Roman venues for practising the sport was the Campus Martius, which was large enough to accommodate a wide variety of activities.
The Roman game was to roll the hoop while throwing a spear or stick through it. For Romans, this was more an entertainment and military development, not a philosophical activity. Several ancient sources praise the sport. According to Horace, hoop driving was one of the manly sports.William Pulleyn (1830) The etymological compendium, or, Portfolio of origins and inventions. T. Tegg. p. 139 Ovid in his Tristia is more specific, putting the sport in the same category with horsemanship, javelin throwing and weapon practice: "Usus equi nunc est, levibus nunc luditur armis, Nunc pila, nunc celeri volvitur orbe trochus."Harris, p. 135 It was also presented as a virtue in the Distichs of Cato, which enjoin youth to "Trocho lude; aleam fuge" ("Play with the hoop, flee the dice").Harris, p. 136 A 2nd-century medical text by Antyllus, preserved in an anthology of Oribasius, Emperor Julian's physician, describes hoop rolling as a form of physical and mental therapy. Antyllus indicates that at first the player should roll the hoop maintaining an upright posture, but after warming up he can begin to jump and run through the hoop. Such exercises, he holds, are best done before a meal or a bath, as with any physical exercise.Harris, pp. 133 ff.
East Asia In China, the game may well go back to 1000 BC or further.Justin Corfield (2009) "Ancient China" in Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society By Rodney P. Carlisle; p. 24. .
Modern usage
Early 19th-century travellers saw children playing with hoops over much of Europe and beyond.François-René de Chateaubriand (1838) Voyage en Amérique. Paris: Lefèvre et Ledentu. p. 120
The game was a common pastime of Tanzanian village children of the African Tanganyika plateau circa the 1910s.Cullen Gouldsbury (1911) The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia, Being Some Impressions of the .... E. Arnold. p. 273 Not long after, it is recorded in the Freetown settler community.Robert Benjamin Ageh Wellesley Cole (1960) Kossoh Town Boy. University Press. p. 54 Christian missionaries encountered it there in the 19th century."They also delight in rolling the hoop", p. 69 in The Gospel in all lands. Children in late Edo period Japan also were known to play the game.Sir Rutherford Alcock (1863) The capital of the tycoon: a narrative of a three years' residence in Japan. New York: Bradley Co. p. 281
In English the sport is known by several names, "hoop and stick", "bowling hoops", or "gird and cleek" in Scotland, where the gird is the hoop and the cleek, the stick.
In the west, around the end of the 19th century, the game was played by boys up to about twelve years of age.Cassell's Complete Book of Sports and Pastimes (1896). Cassell. p. 237. Hoops would at times have pairs of tin squares nailed to the inside of the circle, to jingle as the hoop was rolled.William Clarke (1829) The Boy's Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of All the Diversions Athletic. Vizetelly, Branston and Co. p. 28 Up to a dozen such pairs of rattles might be placed around the rim of the hoop. Some preferred the ashen hoops, round on the outside and flat on the inside, to the ones made of iron, as the latter could break windows and hurt the legs of passersby and horses.
Games Among the games played with the hoops—besides simply trundling them, which is a matter of driving them forward while keeping them upright—are hoop races, as well as games of dexterity. Among these are "toll", in which the player has to drive his hoop between two stones placed two to three inches apart without touching either one.The Corner cupboard, by the ed. of "Enquire within Upon Everything". p. 56 Another such game is "turnpike", in which one player drives the hoop between pairs of objects, such as bricks, at first placed so that the opening is about a foot wide, with each gate kept by a different player. After running all the gates, the openings are made smaller by one inch, and the player trundling the hoop runs the course again. The process repeats until he strikes the side of a gate, then he and the turnpike keeper switch places.
Conflict games such as "hoop battle" or "tournament" can also be played. For this game, boys organise into opposing teams that drive their hoops against each other with the aim of knocking down as many of the opponents' hoops as possible. Only those hoops which fall as a result of a strike by another hoop are counted out.John Kendrick (1852) Every boy's book of games, sports, and diversions, or The school-boy's manual of amusement, instruction and health. London: Grieves. p. 18. In some parts of England, boys played a similar game called "encounters", where two boys would drive their hoops against each other, with the one whose hoop was left standing being declared the winner.
The "hoop hunt" is yet another game, in which one or more hoops are allowed to roll down a hill, with the double aim of rolling as far as possible and then of locating the hoop wherever it may have ended up.William Chambers, Robert Chambers (1864) Chamber's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Arts. p. 503
British Empire In England, children are known to have played the game as early as the 15th century.The Pictorial History of England vol. 2, by George Lillie Craik, Charles Knight, Charles MacFarlane, Harriet Martineau; p. 263 By the late 18th century, boys driving hoops in the London streets had become a nuisance, according to Joseph Strutt. Throughout the 1840s, a barrage of denunciations appeared in the papers against "The Hoop Nuisance", in which their iron hoops were blamed for inflicting severe injuries to pedestrians' shins. The London police attempted to eradicate the practice, confiscating the iron hoops of boys and girls trundling them through the streets and parks. That campaign, however, seems to have failed, as it was accompanied by renewed complaints about the increase of the nuisance.