“A Cricket-Song” from “Fun” (1880)

A Cricket-Song

Engraving

Fun (21 June 1862): 137

Courtesy of the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.

The jingoistic verses that accompanied this illustration make the claim that cricket makes Britons better warriors, makes them men able to handle an Armstrong gun. Cricket, not Rugby? Anyway, this is analogous to the claim that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, something apocryphally attributed to Wellington, who in fact described his solders as “the scum of the earth.”

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[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the University of Florida library and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. — George P. Landow]

A Frenchman (for a wonder, wise)
Declared the other day,
That cricket was a manly game —
The game we love to play;
And said that England’s cricketers
Made strong old England’s sway.

“The men who mount the breach,” he said,
“’Mid rolling smoke-clouds dun,
Whoso name is might in every land.
That lies beneath the sun,
Whoso glory knows no tarnishing,
Are cricketers, each one.”

In cricket’s peaceful field they learn
Endurance, pluck, and nerve —
The eye that does not flinch or quail,
The foot that does not swerve —
The ready hand that wields the bat,
But can an Armstrong serve?

Health’s ruddy glow is on their chock,
Its vigour in their brain;
They laugh at danger, scorn defeat,
And little care for pain;
When England calls for aid, on them
She never calls in vain!

And if — as cunning prophets say —
She’ll need that aid ere long,
She’ll find her cricket-loving sons
As valiant, and as strong,
As staunch to wage old England’s war
Against a world of wrong.

“The world against All England,” boys!
Well! let it be the match,
For we can bowl and bat, my boys,
And we can stop and catch;
And if it comes to that, my boys,
We’re bound to beat the batch.

Then honour to the training hard,
That nerves the good right hand,
That makes tho steady eye and foot —
The noblest pastime planned.
Three cheers for cricket — for the game
Of our good old English land!

Last modified 14 March 2016