[MR] Bowling / skittles--a question

[Leslie Cox]

I'd be willing to guess that that "tailors"  in "Devil amongst the tailors" is reference to a colloquialism in England for church bells; nine was a good number to have to toll back in the day.  What little I know of this was actually gleaned from a mystery called "The Nine Tailors," by Dorothy Sayers (A Lord Peter Wimsey book).

Can anybody confirm this, or does someone have another explanation, by chance?  I love words...   ;-)

Lady Lucy Rose Falconer

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Terry L. Thompson" <terry at firespitter.com>
Reply-To: terry at firespitter.com
Date:  Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:21:54 -0700 (PDT)

>That was Table Top Skittles or "Devil amongst the
>tailors".
>It also comes in a version with a ball hanging from a
>string. Almost always with 9 pins (of various shapes
>and sizes). The table top version with the ball on a
>string that is swung about to knock over the pins was
>recently on an episode of MALCOME IN THE MIDDLE, where
>the father Hal found the game and introduces it to
>Dewey who turns out to be a natural prodigy at the
>game. And even manages to find a Skittles LEAGUE in
>his area. (????)
>Skittles is an english word and is usually used for
>any game in which the object of the game is to knock
>over pins. There is no true standardization to
>Skittles, As even in England the game varies
>drastically from shire to township. 
>The shape of the pins from stick, baton and missile
>shaped to barrel shaped. Either the use of a larger
>KINGPIN in the ranks. As well as the variety of
>"cheese"; the object that is bowled, bounced, or
>thrown at the pins. These "cheeses" can be balls,
>batons, bowls or cheese shaped (think giant hockey
>puck with rounded edges). Some of the cheeses can
>weigh upto 8 lbs (like a normal bowling ball) and must
>be HURLED through the air! Others the object is to
>roll an assymetrically shaped cheeze so that it
>half-circles the pins and circles around the back side
>and strikes the pins from behind (from the thrower's
>perpective) Strangely, Almost universally though,
>there are 9 pins.
>Rules vary from having to bounce the cheese before it
>can hit any pins, or must hit the KingPin before
>hitting any pin for a score to count, to bouncing it
>off of a wall.
>The French called it Kayles or quilles and it dates
>back to atleast the 14th c.
>Historians (and game players) believe it dates back to
>a 3rd cen. german game called KAGEL, wherein Germanic
>monks would throw stones or sticks at a standing club
>called a kagel which represented sins, and the object
>was to banish the sins by nocking over the Kagel.
>The modern German word for the game of Skittles is
>"Kageln"
>-Cian
>
>--- DRYW FREED <drywdryw at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> While we're talking about variations on games with
>> pins, when I was a child in Kentucky, there was a
>
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