Blowers and the curse of Scotland

20 October, 2012 (16:20) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

Aren’t you all lucky? Here’s a little free additional extra to the usual weekly column.

It’s here because a select band of Brothers is off for an audience with the Great Blowers tomorrow night, October 21st, at Tavistock Wharf. We’ve been explaining that we’ll be in the audience for an evening with Henry Blofeld partly in tribute to a key figure in the local euchre scene.

At this point, eyes mist over. What’s the link between Test Match Special’s Henry Blofeld and the rather obscure card game?

It is this: in euchre, some Cornish players are given to referring to the nine of diamonds as “the curse of Scotland”. Why, nobody really knew. Then, once, I think it was Old Father Cullingham who looked up one of the many answers – the nine of diamonds is the card said to have been held by the husband of Mary Queen of Scots during the process of becoming the late husband of Mary Queen of Scots. It is also said to have been scribbled upon to order the massacres after Culloden and to have signalled the massacre of Glencoe. It may also be linked to a tax levied on the Scots…

Anyway, when the great Blowers appeared on University Challenge he correctly proferred one of the above answers (I forget which).

In his honour, euchre players at the Church House Inn began playing ‘Blofeld’s Convention’, by which a player can double his or her points score if the last trick is won by playing the nine of diamonds. By this means, Brother Numbers once became the only player in known euchre history to score eight points on one hand.

The fame of Blofeld’s Convention thereafter reached such a pitch that when the inaugural Euchre World Championship (Linkinhorne Rules) was held last December, players competed for the Henry Blofeld Trophy. Shortly they’ll be competing for it again.

I am fully aware that a very small number of any readers of this will have the faintest idea of what’s going on, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is a concise explanation of how Blowers and the curse of Scotland led to Henry Blofeld becoming a euchre icon. Further detail can be supplied by Old Father Cullingham, I expect, if he’s remembered to put in his teeth.

Comments

Comment from Euchre IgnoramUs
Time October 21, 2012 at 10:09 am

Well…one never knows does one.

Write a comment

You need to login to post comments!