Praise for Quidditch Through the Ages 4 страница

T

he necessity for keeping the game of Quidditch

-218secret from Muggles means that the Department of

Magical Games and Sports has had to limit the number of

games played each year. While amateur games are

permitted as long as the appropriate guidelines are

followed, professional Quidditch teams have been limited

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in number since 1674 when the League was established.

At that time, the thirteen best Quidditch teams in Britain

and Ireland were selected to join the League and all others

were asked to disband. The thirteen teams continue to

compete each year for the League Cup.

Appleby Arrows

This northern English team was founded in 1612. Its

robes are pale blue, emblazoned with a silver arrow.

Arrows fans will agree that their team’s most glorious

hour was their 1932 defeat of the team who were then the

European champions, the Vratsa Vultures, in a match that

lasted sixteen days in conditions of dense fog and rain. The

club supporters’ old practice of shooting arrows into the

air from their wands every time their Chasers scored was

banned by the Department of Magical Games and Sports

in 1894, when one of these weapons pierced the referee

Nugent Potts through the nose. There is traditionally

fierce rivalry between the Arrows and the Wimbourne

Wasps (see below).

Ballycastle Bats

Northern Ireland’s most celebrated Quidditch team has

won the Quidditch League a total of twenty-seven times

to date, making it the second most successful in the

League’s history. The Bats wear black robes with a scarlet

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bat across the chest. Their famous mascot Barny the

Fruitbat is also well-known as the bat featured in

Butterbeer advertisements (Barny says: I’m just batty about

Butterbeer!).

Caerphilly Catapults

The Welsh Catapults, formed in 1402, wear vertically

striped robes of light green and scarlet. Their

distinguished club history includes eighteen League wins

and a famous triumph in the European Cup final of 1956,

when they defeated the Norwegian Karasjok Kites. The

tragic demise of their most famous player, “Dangerous”

Dai Llewellyn, who was eaten by a Chimaera while on

holiday in Mykonos, Greece, resulted in a day of national

mourning for all Welsh witches and wizards. The

Dangerous Dai Commemorative Medal is now awarded at

the end of each season to the League player who has taken

the most exciting and foolhardy risks during a game.

Chudley Cannons

The Chudley Cannons’ glory days may be considered by

many to be over, but their devoted fans live in hope of a

renaissance. The Cannons have won the League twenty-

one times, but the last time they did so was in 1892 and

their performance over the last century has been

lacklustre. The Chudley Cannons wear robes of bright

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orange emblazoned with a speeding cannon ball and a

double “C” in black. The club motto was changed in 1972

from “We shall conquer” to “Let’s all just keep our fingers

crossed and hope for the best.”

Falmouth Falcons

The Falcons wear dark-grey and white robes with a

falcon-head emblem across the chest. The Falcons are

known for hard play, a reputation consolidated by their

world-famous Beaters, Kevin and Karl Broadmoor, who

played for the club from 1958 to 1969 and whose antics

resulted in no fewer than fourteen suspensions from the

Department of Magical Games and Sports. Club motto:

“Let us win, but if we cannot win, let us break a few

heads.”

Holyhead Harpies

The Holyhead Harpies is a very old Welsh club (founded

1203), unique among Quidditch teams around the world

because it has only ever hired witches. Harpy robes are

dark green with a golden talon upon the chest. The

Harpies’ defeat of the Heidelberg Harriers in 1953 is

widely agreed to have been one of the finest Quidditch

games ever seen. Fought over a seven-day period, the

game was brought to an end by a spectacular Snitch

capture by the Harpy Seeker Glynnis Griffiths. The

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Harriers’ Captain Rudolf Brand famously dismounted

from his broom at the end of the match and proposed

marriage to his opposite number, Gwendolyn Morgan,

who concussed him with her Cleansweep Five.

Kenmare Kestrels

This Irish side was founded in 1291 and is popular

worldwide for the spirited displays of their leprechaun

mascots and the accomplished harp playing of their

supporters. The Kestrels wear emerald-green robes with

two yellow “K”s back to back on the chest. Darren

O’Hare, Kestrel Keeper 1947–60, captained the Irish

National Team three times and is credited with the

invention of the Chaser Hawkshead Attacking Formation

(see Chapter Ten).

Montrose Magpies

The Magpies are the most successful team in the history

of the British and Irish League, which they have won

thirty-two times. Twice European Champions, the

Magpies have fans across the globe. Their many

outstanding players include the Seeker Eunice Murray

(died 1942), who once petitioned for a “faster Snitch

because this is just too easy,” and Hamish MacFarlan

(Captain 1957–68), who followed his successful

Quidditch career with an equally illustrious period as

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Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

The Magpies wear black and white robes with one magpie

on the chest and another on the back.

Pride of Portree

This team comes from the Isle of Skye, where it was

founded in 1292. The “Prides,” as they are known to their

fans, wear deep-purple robes with a gold star on the

chest. Their most famous Chaser, Catriona McCormack,

captained the team to two League wins in the 1960s, and

played for Scotland thirty-six times. Her daughter

Meaghan currently plays Keeper for the team. (Her son

Kirley is lead guitarist with the popular wizarding band

The Weird Sisters.)

Puddlemere United

Founded in 1163, Puddlemere United is the oldest team

in the League. Puddlemere has twenty-two League wins

and two European Cup triumphs to its credit. Its team

anthem “Beat Back Those Bludgers, Boys, and Chuck That

Quaffle Here” was recently recorded by the singing

sorceress Celestina Warbeck to raise funds for St. Mungo’s

Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Puddlemere

players wear navy-blue robes bearing the club emblem of

two crossed golden bulrushes.

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Tutshill Tornados

The Tornados wear sky-blue robes with a double “T” in

dark blue on the chest and back. Founded in 1520, the

Tornados enjoyed their greatest period of success in the

early twentieth century when, captained by Seeker

Roderick Plumpton, they won the League Cup five times

in a row, a British and Irish record. Roderick Plumpton played

Seeker for England twenty-two times and holds the British

record for fastest capture of a Snitch during a game (three and

a half seconds, against Caerphilly Catapults, 1921).

Wigtown Wanderers

This Borders club was founded in 1422 by the seven

offspring of a wizarding butcher named Walter Parkin.

The four brothers and three sisters were by all accounts a

formidable team who rarely lost a match, partly, it is said,

because of the intimidation felt by opposing teams at the

sight of Walter standing on the sidelines with a wand in

one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. A Parkin

descendant has often been found on the Wigtown team

over the centuries and in tribute to their origins, the

players wear blood-red robes with a silver meat cleaver

upon the chest.

Wimbourne Wasps

The Wimbourne Wasps wear horizontally striped robes of

yellow and black with a wasp upon their chests. Founded

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in 1312, the Wasps have been eighteen times League

winners and twice semifinalists in the European Cup.

They are alleged to have taken their name from a nasty

incident which occurred during a match against the

Appleby Arrows in the mid-seventeenth century, when a

Beater flying past a tree on the edge of the pitch noticed a

wasps’ nest among the branches and batted it towards the

Arrows’ Seeker, who was so badly stung that he had to

retire from the game. Wimbourne won and thereafter

adopted the wasp as their lucky emblem. Wasp fans (also

known as “Stingers”) traditionally buzz loudly to distract

opposing Chasers when they are taking penalties.

Chapter Eight

The Spread of

Quidditch Worldwide

Europe

Quidditch was well established in Ireland by the

fourteenth century, as proved by Zacharias Mumps’s

account of a match in 1385: “A team of Warlocks from

Cork flew over for a game in Lancashire and did offend

the locals by beating their heroes soundly. The Irishmen

knew tricks with the Quaffle that had not been seen in

Lancashire before and had to flee the village for fear of

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their lives when the crowd drew out their wands and gave

chase.”

Diverse sources show that the game had spread into

other parts of Europe by the early fifteenth century. We

know that Norway was an early convert to the game

(could Goodwin Kneen’s cousin Olaf have introduced

the game there?) because of the verse written by the poet

Ingolfr the Iambic in the early 1400s:

Oh, the thrill of the chase as I soar through the air

With the Snitch up ahead and the wind in my hair

As I draw ever closer, the crowd gives a shout

But then comes a Bludger and I am knocked out.

Around the same time, the French wizard Malecrit wrote

the following lines in his play Hйlas, Je me suis Transfigurй Les

Pieds (“Alas, I’ve Transfigured My Feet”):

GRENOUILLE: I cannot go with you to the market today,

Crapaud.

CRAPAUD: But Grenouille, I cannot carry the cow alone.

GRENOUILLE: You know, Crapaud, that I am to be Keeper

this morning. Who will stop the Quaffle if I do not?

The year 1473 saw the first ever Quidditch World Cup,

though the nations represented were all European. The

nonappearance of teams from more distant nations may

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be put down to the collapse of owls bearing letters of

invitation, the reluctance of those invited to make such a

long and perilous journey, or perhaps a simple preference

for staying at home.

The final between Transylvania and Flanders has gone

down in history as the most violent of all time and many

of the fouls then recorded had never been seen before –

for instance, the transfiguration of a Chaser into a polecat,

the attempted decapitation of a Keeper with a broadsword,

and the release, from under the robes of the Transylvanian

Captain, of a hundred blood-sucking vampire bats.

The World Cup has since been held every four years,

though it was not until the seventeenth century that non-

European teams turned up to compete. In 1652 the

European Cup was established, and it has been played

every three years since.

Of the many superb European teams, perhaps the

Bulgarian Vratsa Vulturesis most renowned. Seven

times European Cup winners, the Vratsa Vultures are

undoubtedly one of the most thrilling teams in the world

to watch, pioneers of the long goal (shooting from well

outside the scoring area), and always willing to give new

players a chance to make a name for themselves.

In France the frequent League winners the Quiberon

Quafflepunchersare famed for their flamboyant play

as much as for their shocking-pink robes. In Germany we

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find the Heidelberg Harriers,the team that the Irish

Captain Darren O’Hare once famously said was “fiercer

than a dragon and twice as clever.” Luxembourg, always a

strong Quidditch nation, has given us the Bigonville

Bombers,celebrated for their offensive strategies and

always among the top goal-scorers. The Portuguese team

Braga Broomfleethave recently broken through into

the top levels of the sport with their groundbreaking

Beater-marking system; and the Polish Grodzisk

Goblinsgave us arguably the world’s most innovative

Seeker, Josef Wronski.

Australia and New Zealand

Quidditch was introduced to New Zealand some time in

the seventeenth century, allegedly by a team of European

herbologists who had gone on an expedition there to

research magical plants and fungi. We are told that after a

long day’s toil collecting samples, these witches and

wizards let off steam by playing Quidditch under the

bemused gaze of the local magical community. The New

Zealand Ministry of Magic has certainly spent much time

and money preventing Muggles getting hold of Maori art

of that period which clearly depicts white wizards playing

Quidditch (these carvings and paintings are now on

display at the Ministry of Magic in Wellington).

The spread of Quidditch to Australia is believed to have

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occurred some time in the eighteenth century. Australia

may be said to be an ideal Quidditch-playing territory,

given the great expanses of uninhabited outback where

Quidditch pitches may be established.

Antipodean teams have always thrilled European

crowds with their speed and showmanship. Among the

best are the _Moutohora Macaws (New Zealand), with

their famous red, yellow, and blue robes, and their

phoenix mascot Sparky. The Thundelarra Thunderers

and the _Woollongong Warriorshave dominated the

Australian League for the best part of a century. Their

enmity is legendary among the Australian magical

community, so much so that a popular response to an

unlikely claim or boast is “Yeah, and I think I’ll volunteer

to ref the next Thunderer–Warrior game.”

Africa

The broomstick was probably introduced to the African

continent by European wizards and witches travelling

there in search of information on alchemy and astronomy,

subjects in which African wizards have always been

particularly skilled. Though not yet as widely played as in

Europe, Quidditch is becoming increasingly popular

throughout the African continent.

Uganda in particular is emerging as a keen Quidditch-

playing nation. Their most notable club, the Patonga

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Proudsticks, held the Montrose Magpies to a draw in

1986 to the astonishment of most of the Quidditch-

playing world. Six Proudstick players recently

represented Uganda in the Quidditch World Cup, the

highest number of fliers from a single team ever united on

a national side. Other African teams of note include the

Tchamba Charmers (Togo), masters of the reverse

pass; the Gimbi Giant-Slayers (Ethiopia), twice

winners of the All-Africa Cup; and the Sumbawanga

Sunrays (Tanzania), a highly popular team whose

formation looping has delighted crowds across the world.

North America

Quidditch reached the North American continent in the

early seventeenth century, although it was slow to take

hold there owing to the great intensity of anti-wizarding

feeling unfortunately exported from Europe at the same

time. The great caution exercised by wizard settlers, many

of whom had hoped to find less prejudice in the New

World, tended to restrict the growth of the game in its

early days.

In later times, however, Canada has given us three of the

most accomplished Quidditch teams in the world: the

Moose Jaw Meteorites, the Haileybury Hammers,

and the Stonewall Stormers. The Meteorites were

threatened with disbandment in the 1970s owing to their

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persistent practice of performing post-match victory

flights over neighbouring towns and villages while trailing

fiery sparks from their broom tails. The team now

confines this tradition to the pitch at the end of each

match and Meteorite games consequently remain a great

wizarding tourist attraction.

The United States has not produced as many world-

class Quidditch teams as other nations because the game

has had to compete with the American broom game

Quodpot. A variant of Quidditch, Quodpot was invented

by the eighteenth-century wizard Abraham Peasegood,

who had brought a Quaffle with him from the old country

and intended to recruit a Quidditch team. The story goes

that Peasegood’s Quaffle had inadvertently come into

contact with the tip of his wand in his trunk, so that when

he finally took it out and began to throw it around in a

casual manner, it exploded in his face. Peasegood, whose

sense of humour appears to have been robust, promptly

set out to recreate the effect on a series of leather balls

and soon all thought of Quidditch was forgotten as he and

his friends developed a game which centred on the

explosive properties of the newly renamed “Quod.”

There are eleven players a side in the game of Quodpot.

They throw the Quod, or modified Quaffle, from team

member to member, attempting to get it into the “pot” at

the end of the pitch before it explodes. Any player in

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possession of the Quod when it explodes must leave the

pitch. Once the Quod is safely in the “pot” (a small

cauldron containing a solution which will prevent the

Quod exploding), the scorer’s team is awarded a point

and a new Quod is brought on to the pitch. Quodpot has

had some success as a minority sport in Europe, though

the vast majority of wizards remain faithful to Quidditch.

The rival charms of Quodpot notwithstanding,

Quidditch is gaining popularity in the United States. Two

teams have recently broken through at international level:

the Sweetwater All-Starsfrom Texas, who gained a

well-deserved win over the Quiberon Quafflepunchers in

1993 after a thrilling five-day match; and the Fitchburg

Finchesfrom Massachusetts, who have now won the US

League seven times and whose Seeker, Maximus

Brankovitch III, has captained America at the last two

World Cups.

South America

Quidditch is played throughout South America, though

the game must compete with the popular Quodpot here

as in the North. Argentina and Brazil both reached the

quarter-finals of the World Cup in the last century.

Undoubtedly the most skilled Quidditch nation in South

America is Peru, which is tipped to become the first Latin

World Cup winner within ten years. Peruvian warlocks

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are believed to have had their first exposure to Quidditch

from European wizards sent by the International

Confederation to monitor the numbers of Vipertooths

(Peru’s native dragon). Quidditch has become a veritable

obsession of the wizard community there since that time,

and their most famous team, the Tarapoto Tree-

Skimmers,recently toured Europe to great acclaim.

Asia

Quidditch has never achieved great popularity in the East,

as the flying broomstick is a rarity in countries where the

carpet is still the preferred mode of travel. The Ministries

of Magic in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,

Iran, and Mongolia, all of whom maintain a flourishing

trade in flying carpets, regard Quidditch with some

suspicion, though the sport does have some fans among

witches and wizards on the street.

The exception to this general rule is Japan, where

Quidditch has been gaining steadily in popularity over the

last century. The most successful Japanese team, the

Toyohashi Tengu,narrowly missed a win over

Lithuania’s Gorodok Gargoylesin 1994. The Japanese

practice of ceremonially setting fire to their brooms in

case of defeat is, however, frowned upon by the

International Confederation of Wizards’ Quidditch

Committee as being a waste of good wood.

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U

Chapter Nine

The Development of the

Racing Broom

ntil the early nineteenth century, Quidditch was

-204played on day brooms of varying quality. These

brooms represented a massive advance over their

medieval forerunners; the invention of the Cushioning

Charm by Elliot Smethwyck in 1820 went a long way

towards making broomsticks more comfortable than ever

before (see Fig. F). Nevertheless, nineteenth-century

broomsticks were generally incapable of achieving high

speeds and were often difficult to control at high altitudes.

Brooms tended to be hand-produced by individual

broom-makers, and while they are admirable from the

point of view of styling and craftsmanship, their

performance rarely matched up to their handsome

appearance.

A case in point is the Oakshaft 79(so named because

the first example was created in 1879). Crafted by the

broom-maker Elias Grimstone of Portsmouth, the

Oakshaft is a handsome broom with a very thick oaken

handle, designed for endurance flying and to withstand

high winds. The Oakshaft is now a highly prized vintage

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broom, but attempts to use it for Quidditch were never

successful. Too cumbersome to turn at high speed, the

Oakshaft never gained much popularity with those who

prized agility over safety , though it will a lwa ys be

remembered as the broom used in the first ever Atlantic

broom crossing, by Jocunda Sykes in 1935. (Before that

time, wizards preferred to take ships rather than trust

broomsticks over such distances. Apparition becomes

increasingly unreliable over very long distances, and only

highly skilled wizards are wise to attempt it across

continents.)

The Moontrimmer,which was first created by

Gladys Boothby in 1901, represented a leap forward in

broom construction, and for a while these slender, ash-

handled brooms were in great demand as Quidditch

brooms. The Moontrimmer’s principal advantage over

other brooms was its ability to achieve greater heights

than ever before (and remain controllable at such

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altitudes). Gladys Boothby was unable to produce

Moontrimmers in the quantities Quidditch players

clamoured for. The production of a new broom, the

Silver Arrow,was welcomed; this was the true

forerunner of the racing broom, achieving much higher

speeds than the Moontrimmer or Oakshaft (up to seventy

miles an hour with a tailwind), but like these it was the

work of a single wizard (Leonard Jewkes), and demand far

outstripped supply.

The breakthrough occurred in 1926, when the brothers

Bob, Bill, and Barnaby Ollerton started the Cleansweep

Broom Company. Their first model, the Cleansweep

One,was produced in numbers never seen before and

marketed as a racing broom specifically designed for

sporting use. The Cleansweep was an instant, runaway

success, cornering as no broom before it, and within a

year, every Quidditch team in the country was mounted

on Cleansweeps.

The Ollerton brothers were not left in sole possession

of the racing-broom market for long. In 1929 a second

racing-broom company was established by Randolph

Keitch and Basil Horton, both players for the Falmouth

Falcons. The Comet Trading Company’s first broom was

the Comet 140,this being the number of models that

Keitch and Horton had tested prior to its release. The

patented Horton–Keitch braking charm meant that

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Quidditch players were much less likely to overshoot

goals or fly offside, and the Comet now became the

broom of preference for many British and Irish teams in

consequence.

While the Cleansweep–Comet competition became

more intense, marked by the release of the improved

Cleansweeps Two and Three in 1934 and 1937

respectively, and the Comet 180 in 1938, other

broomstick manufacturers were springing up all over

Europe.

The _Tinderblastwas launched on the market in 1940.

Produced by the Black Forest company Ellerby and

Spudmore, the Tinderblast is a highly resilient broom,

though it has never achieved the top speeds of the Comets

and Cleansweeps. In 1952 Ellerby and Spudmore brought

out a new model, the _Swiftstick.Faster than the

Tinderblast, the Swiftstick nevertheless has a tendency to

lose power in ascent and has never been used by

professional Quidditch teams.

In 1955 Universal Brooms Ltd. introduced the

Shooting Star,the cheapest racing broom to date.

Unfortunately, after its initial burst of popularity, the

Shooting Star was found to lose speed and height as it

aged, and Universal Brooms went out of business in 1978.

In 1967 the broom world was galvanised by the

formation of the Nimbus Racing Broom Company.

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Nothing like the _Nimbus 1000had ever been seen