Cabra History.Com

Do you remember years ago when you’d  have your pockets bulging with marbles? You’d have Steelies and Scrunchies and some with pieces chipped off them. Marbles came from a world of childhood magic with all their swirls of colour wrapped up in a little ball of hard glass. We know that ‘marbles’ was played throughout Europe. There are mentions of the
game in Shakespeare.  The earliest marbles were made of common stone, in some cases real marble and clay. Coloured glass marbles are mentioned as early as the fifteenth century in German literature and were known to have been made in Venice and Bohemia at this time.
It is assumed that these early glass marbles were not made commercially, but were made by glass workers for their own children at the end of the day. Needless to say, judging by the above photograph young boys never grow old. Marbles was of course a game that kept us kids entertained for hours upon end. We’d get together with a few pals and put all our marbles in a straight row against the little wall outside our gate and each of us would take our turn of standing at the edge of the footpath and rolling our favourite marble at the line-up in the hope of knocking as many as possible out of the row. It was great fun and anyone could play as long as they had marbles. Why don’t kids today get rid of those eye patches or eye pods, whatever they call them and buy a bag of marbles?