image courtesy of Stephen Vincke by The Boudineux of La Bouverie
Chole was a medieval French sport with some striking similarities to golf, though with a few twists. The game involved using clubs to strike a wooden ball toward a target, typically a pole (not a hole). Chole was unique in that both players struck the same ball, a mechanic not expected of a golf-like sport. The modern version of the sport involves an alternation between the first player striking the ball toward the goal and the second player striking the ball away, and it is likely the medieval ruleset was similar. (It should be noted that although the game appears to bear some similarities with golf, it was likely its own solitary sport and not a figure in the development of golf.)
Chole and La Soule
Chole may have some sort of relation to another medieval French sport by the name of la soule, as the two sports appear to share some characteristics. Although la soule is a form of medieval mob football, one of its variants had players handling a wooden ball with hockey-like sticks. As references to chole similarly describe using clubs to strike a wooden ball,* it is possible that these two sports are related. This is also suggested by the phonetic similarities between their names. It could be the case, however, that this similarity in naming resulted in the two sports sometimes being conflated in discussion. Regardless, the evidence leans toward the two sports being their own separate games, as further discussed below.
*There is some disagreement as to how many balls were involved in the medieval version of chole. Some sources suggest there was a single ball while others suggest there was one for each player, similar to golf.
History
image courtesy of Stephen Vincke by The Boudineux of La Bouverie
It is commonly cited that the earliest literary reference to chole lies in 1353; Horace Hutchinson, in his Classic Guide to Golf (originally published in 1892), claims that the word is used in “legal documents” dated to that year. This may very well be accurate, but the claim is difficult to verify without an actual reference to such documents. Similarly, he references an unnamed missal from 1504, though he does support this with an illustration of chole pulled from the text. He also states, verifiably, that in the French historian Du Cange’s 1883 Latin dictionary Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, the word choulla (French chole) is defined as, translated into English, “a wooden ball struck by a club.”
With the above in mind, we can be fairly certain that chole was played as early as the 14th or 15th century, as any sport would naturally predate its earliest references. (As an aside, the earliest references to la soule lie in the 13th century, further suggesting that it and chole are indeed two separate sports.) Chole is still played at some level in both northern France and Belgium, its northeastern neighbor, suggesting the game was most popular in this region throughout its history. This means that the sport likely has a history spanning across 600 years at a minimum, perhaps reaching up to 800 years at most.
How to Play
Medieval sources that reference chole do not explicitly detail its rules throughout this period. Because of this lack of information, a brief summary of the modern rendition of the game is given below.
Chole is played on open fields, much like golf. Two players choose a starting point and make an upright goal marker using a pole or a narrow board set some distance away. The first player strikes the ball three times, attempting to land the ball closer to the goal with each swing. After this, the opponent is allowed to strike the ball one time in an attempt to hinder the first player. They can simply strike the ball in the opposite direction or, if an opportunity presents itself, try to land the ball in a troublesome spot, such as a cow patty, a cabbage patch, or behind a hill. This process repeats itself until the first player reaches the goal, then the roles are switched. This may be accurately described as a three-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of game.
While this is the gist of the modern variant of chole, it may not represent the game in its medieval form. While the single wooden ball, use of clubs, and antagonistic mechanic may have all been featured in the original sport, its finer details are nonetheless unknown. As mentioned above, some sources (specifically, a 1504 illustration referenced by Horace Hutchinson) seem to indicate that multiple balls were used in some variations. This may have been a feature in games with teams, where the members of one team would work toward the goal and the members of the other would interfere as described above, though this is speculative.
Equipment
image courtesy of Stephen Vincke by The Boudineux of La Bouverie
Medieval references to chole typically note that the ball used for the game was made of wood. Modern chole balls can vary in size, shape, and material, though most of them are wooden, carved to match roughly the size and oblong shape of an egg. The few medieval engravings of the sport depict a similarly shaped ball, suggesting that the ball itself has not evolved much, if at all, throughout the history of the sport. It should be noted, however, that the ball used for official, competitive matches of modern chole, is smaller and round, much like a golf ball.
image courtesy of Stephen Vincke by The Boudineux of La Bouverie
The modern club used for chole is unique to the sport. Its head is not like any golf club, but is instead somewhat hook-shaped, like a hand scooping an object off of the ground. As such, the launch of the chole ball may be accurately described as scooping and flinging it more than striking it. This unique shape helps with launching the ball from rough terrain. It is unknown whether this type of club was used in the medieval version of the sport, though it would be expected that simpler, non-regulated clubs would have been used, as seen in other medieval golf-like sports such as the Dutch game kolf.
As an additional side note on the relationship between chole and la soule, the balls used for the two games in the Middle Ages appear to have been quite different. The chole ball is always described as being made of wood, presumably solid all the way through like the kind used in the modern version of the sport. In contrast, although the soule ball could be made of wood (either with a solid or hollow center), it could also be stuffed, held together by an animal bladder or stitched-leather outer. The variability in the crafting of the soule compared with the unanimously wooden descriptions of the chole ball further suggests that the two sports were separate.
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Hutchinson, H. G. (2014). The classic guide to golf. Amberley.
Rowley, C. (2015). The shared origins of football, rugby, and soccer. Rowman & Littlefield.
Nauright, J. (2012). Sports around the World: History, Culture, and Practice. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
The Chole (Crossage en Plaine), Nowadays. Retrieved February 7, 2017, from Golfika. (note: French author with apparent non-native English; cited only for modern chole rules)
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