Here we go again. The English claim that they invented the game of soccer (called football in the UK) in 1848 when students at Cambridge University formulated the first set of rules.
Not so fast England. According to the UKs Daily Record newspaper experts at the Scottish Foodball Museum at Hampden (Hampden Park near Glasgow is considered the national football stadium of Scotland) have discovered evidence of Scottish noblemen playing football with rules three centuries earlier.
Historic documents in the National Library of Scotland (NLS) describe games taking place in castle courtyards where players were only allowed to use their feet and a manuscript exists that showed King James IV of Scotland paid two shillings for a bag of “fut ballis’ as early ast April 11, 1497.
In fact, a leather football in the photograph above was “found in the 1970′s during an excavation at Stirling Castle in Scotland. It was found in the bedroom used by Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. She was the queen from December of 1542 through July of 1567. It’s made of deerskin with a pig’s bladder inside to allow for inflation. It is housed at the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling, Scotland.” Quote–East Side FC News Blog.
It is also on record that an argument started over a bad tackle that almost led to a dual to the death between the Earl of Bothwell and George Kieth, Mater of Marischal. Fortunately, King James VI (and first of England) was tipped off and put a stop to it.
The NLS has among its collections a Latin text entitled Vocabula, which proves that football was first played in Scotland. The book was first published in 1636 and authored by Aberdeen schoolteacher David Wedderburn.
Click on the link National Library of Scotland to see the book.
You can also click on Daily Record to read the article.
Tags: football, history, National Library of Scotland, online, records, Scotland, soccer, stirling
