history

The club was instituted in 1821, and the original constitution was written in that year. The preface to that constitution captures the spirit of the game and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of curling prose.

The preface to the Peebles Club’s constitution and rules of 1821

“None of the pastimes in which Scotsmen indulge have given occasion to such a diversity of opinion as our National Manly Game of Curling. By some it has been reprobated in the severest terms, and represented as an encouragement to idleness a temptation to profane swearing an incitement to quarrelling and an inducement to dissipation: By others it has been extolled in the language of unqualified panegyric and declared to be friendly to innocence conducive to health favorable to temperance and contributive to social intercourse.

“For our part without minutely discussing its merits or demerits but weighing them in a strict balance we can state from experience that curling so far from promoting idleness is an active and laborious recreation, an enemy to every spirit of sensual indulgence debarring those who engage in it for the time being from tippling in Taverns, lounging laziely and effeminately at a fire side or devoting themselves to worse imployments; peculiarly adopted also to the preservation of a sound constitution by favoring its Votaries with these two grand preventatives of disease and restoratives of health ‘Air and Exercise.’

“At a season of the year when the Plough is arrested in the furrow, when Masonic and many other handicraft impliments are laid aside, and when the Mill wheel refuses to revolve on its axis, what can be more harmless, what more salubrious, what more social, than for those who are in possession of health, indowed with muscular strength blessed with a keen eye and a steady hand to repair to the still river Cuddies pool or the flooded Gytes, the waters whereof are bound in icy fetters and the surface smooth as the polished Mirror and transparent as the crystalian Cup and there give a display of strength dexterity and skill, united in a Game the darling of our forefathers.”