le pendu wrote:
Couldn't it also have been adapted from a Tarot to play Trappola? At least originally? Of course, that's just noting the existing cards match Trappola. It doesn't mean much without knowing if other cards exist.
Yes, that was my twice removed hypothesis - "A less likely scenario is that the adaptation is *twice* removed - i.e. the Tarot was adapted to play Trappola, and then somebody who wanted to play Piquet had to readapt what was left."
The suit - courts and pips, Italian suited - match a Trappola suit, but it is a non-standard Trappola if so. The handwritten indices are French, and by making the Knight indicate a Queen, and 6 on the 2 seems to want to make the cards play the older form of Piquet, with 36 cards (it got shortened to 32 in the 18th century I think, by taking out the 6). But that seems an odd thing to do to a pack of cards, if you really wanted to play with them.
It's certainly strange that someone would mark the cards in such a manner. Why have the Knight as "Dame" unless there was no Queen? Of course, this is likely someone later marking the cards.
I'm so ignorant of playing cards. How common were King, Knight, Valet sets? What does that tell us if these were originally a set of playing cards, anything?
I was so struck by the similarity to the Vieville and Vandenborre that I assumed these were probably Tarot.
I'm not sure where to go from here. I wonder if the BnF has more cards from the pack? If only we knew someone who could speak French!
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
That's what I wondered - if taken straight from Tarot, and desiring a Queen, there'd be no need to make the Knight fill that role. Thus, a priori, there was no Queen when the handwritten indices were made, and that makes it much less likely that these cards are the first diminution of a previous full tarot (and the absence of the 6 as well), if they were originally tarot at all. Hence the suggestion that it is either a strange Trappola or a "Belgian" standard pack.
I'm sure that somebody could help us (maybe Thierry), but I can't make out anything else from the BnF site. I'll look around in D'Allemagne and other places to cover all bases so I sound intelligent when and if I have to write him.
Fascinating!
Ross