I was intrigued to read in Robert Malsters dictionary of East Anglian dialect, The Mardlers Companion, that conker was formerly a dialect word for a snail (the usual dialect word is hodmedod), and that the traditional boys game of conkers was originally played with live snail shells. Conkers, in which two opponents take turns to strike and try to shatter the others horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) held suspended on a string. is still popular although banned as hazardous from some playgrounds! The Oxford English Dictionary Supplement and I and P Opies 1969 book Childrens Games in Street and Playground supplied more details.

The earliest record of a contest with horse chestnuts is 1848, and the poet Robert Southey (born 1774) recalling his schooldays near Bristol wrote "It was performed with snail shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering. ..... A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted." The spelling conkers was also in use by 1847. From Southeys letter, it appears that the system of scoring with horse chestnuts was also used for snail shells, for he records finding a boy who "had fallen in with a great number of young snails so recently hatched that the shells were still transparent and he was besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one after another against his conqueror, counting away with the greatest satisfaction at his work".

Clearly, live snails were used, and the snails were held in the hand, not threaded on a string. Yet the Opies state that one of John Clares favourite pastimes in Northamptonshire was gathering "pooty shells", threading them on a string and playing "cock-fighting" by pressing the knibbs hard against each other till one broke.

Bill Bailey