Maw (card game)

The game disappeared from the literature after the period of the English Commonwealth, only to emerge in Ireland in the 19th century in new forms for two or more players and known as five and ten, spoil five and forty-five.

"[2] The former peasant's game had certainly become fashionable in court circles by the reign of James I and the king himself was a card player, a 1622 pamphlet alluding to this: "Ever in the very gaming Ordinaries, where men have scarce leisure to say grace, yet they take a tyme to censure your Majesties actions and that in their oulde school Termes.

They say you have lost the fairest game at Maw that ever King had, for want of making the best advantage of the five finger, and playing the other helpes in time.

[4] The game is mentioned in a 1608 play by Thomas Middleton in which a character replies: "Then I hope, you will be as good to us as the five-finger at maw," and in another in 1611 written by George Chapman and called May Day in which Lodovico rues his loss in a game of Maw against Lucretia: "You will the more muse at my fortune, or my oversights.

[1] Charles Cotton calls its descendant in 1674 "five-cards", and gives the nickname five fingers to the five of trumps, extracted from the fact that the Irish word cúig means both 'five' and 'trick'.

First was a version in which four played in two teams of two players that was called five and ten after the rewards for winning singly and double respectively.

Second, the first round game version emerged with the inevitable consequence that there might not now be a winner if the hand was "spoilt" by no-one being able to take 3 tricks.

As Samuel Lover explained in 1837, "The game they played was one which has long been a favourite in Ireland, and still continues to be so amongst the peasantry.

[11] Forty-five or five and forty had emerged by the early 19th century as a popular Irish variant in which each trick scored 5 points and game was 45.

In 1837, in an article describing the atmosphere of the Fermoy racecourse, the reader is told that "if you prefer a stroll through the crowd to the music on the stands, where a couple of military bands are always stationed, or to seeing the horses rubbed down, you will see parties of four or six engaged at innumerable tables, playing, with what they are pleased to call cards, at the Irish game of forty-five.

...to your astonishment, the players throw [the cards] down as quick as thought, hitting the table a blow with the knuckles, whenever they play a good trump, that would peel the skin off any fists not as hard as horn.

[13] And in 1858, an Irish periodical describes twenty-five and forty-five as "our own old games" in which the five of trumps, called five fingers, was the best card, followed by the ace of hearts.

[17] Forty-fives is popularly played on the South Island of New Zealand, especially on the west coast which had a large number of Irish immigrants in the past who brought the game with them.

It is described by Charles Cotton in 1674 as an Irish game, played "in that Kingdom... for considerable sums of money".

In detail the cards rank (high to low) as follows when the respective suits are trumps:[19] When not trumps the cards rank in their side suits as follows: Each hand is a complete game in itself and the aim is to win the majority of the 5 tricks, called a Five and earning a single stake for the winner.

[19] Hardie mentions a three-hand game in passing in which, if no-one takes 3 tricks, the hands is 'spoilt' and the stakes carried forward and increased.

Mentioned as early as in 1829 in Ireland,[20] the first rules were published by George Pardon who says that this "thoroughly Irish game [is] very little known out of the Emerald Isle.

Another apparent change was to the rules of play which were as in all fours, not whist, although this interpretation was not initially adopted by other authors.

All is as in Pardon with the following exceptions:[22] Under the name five and forty a rudimentary form of the game is described as early as 1831 by Eliza Leslie in a book for American girls.