Dwile flonking

The English game of dwile flonking (also dwyle flunking) involves two teams, each taking a turn to dance around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile (cloth) thrown by the non-dancing team.

"Dwile" is a knitted floor cloth, from the Dutch dweil, meaning "mop", and "flonk" is probably a corruption of flong, an old past tense of fling.

According to the Friends of the Lewes Arms, "The rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested."

A "dull witted person" is chosen as the referee or "jobanowl", and the two teams decide who flonks first by tossing a sugar beet. The game begins when the jobanowl shouts, "Here y'go t'gither!"

The non-flonking team joins hands and dances in a circle around a member of the flonking team, a practice known as "girting". The flonker dips his dwile-tipped "driveller" (a pole 2–3 ft long and made from hazel or yew) into a bucket of beer, then spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dwile at them.

If the dwile misses completely it is known as a "swadge". When this happens, the flonker must drink the contents of an ale-filled "gazunder" (chamber pot ("goes-under" the bed)) before the wet dwile has passed from hand to hand along the line of now non-girting girters chanting the ceremonial mantra of "pot pot pot".

A full game comprises two "snurds", each snurd being one team taking a turn at girting. The jobanowl adds interest and difficulty to the game by randomly switching the direction of rotation and will levy drinking penalties on any player found not taking the game seriously enough.

Points are awarded as follows:

At the end of the game, the team with the most number of points wins, and will be awarded a ceremonial pewter gazunder.

The earliest documented real-life game of dwile flonking was played outside the Cricketers Arms pub at Seacroft, Leeds in 1965. It was re-created from memories of the Michael Bentine original, with a few additions to the (unknown) rules, by Mr Christopher Field who was an employee of John Waddingtons, the famous Leeds printing firm. An article in the Yorkshire Evening Post "Flonking away 'dwile' Seacroft watches, by Alan Brook refers. Subsequently, Granada TV personality Johnathan Routh (of Candid Camera fame) recorded a game with the original players at the same place for his show 'Nice Time'. There is a reference to the sport which predates this- originating in the fertile imagination of Michael Bentine, who had a show called It's a Square World, on the BBC. A skit in one episode had explorers stumble across a group of natives playing the sport in the darkest reaches of the English countryside. The episode aired some time between 1960 and 1964, when the show was originally broadcast.

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