Ninepenny Marl

A correspondent told Hone in July 1826 of an ancient game played by the shepherds of Salisbury Plain and the village people round about, called Ninepenny Marl, which he had never seen described in print. The board of lines was cut in the turf, chalked on the crown of a hat, or marked on a table or the side of a pair of bellows in cottages and alehouses. Two players each had nine men, bits of pipe or stick, and placed them in turn on the points, each trying to make a line of three and stop the other doing so; a man taken was put in the middle square, and a player reduced to three could hop into any empty place. It is the game better known as nine men’s morris.