Aunt Sally

For the 1933 film, see Aunt Sally (film).

A drawing from the 1911 edition of Whiteley's General Catalogue.

Aunt Sally is a traditional throwing game. The term is often used metaphorically to mean something that is a target for criticism. In particular, referring to the fairground origins, an Aunt Sally would be "set up" deliberately to be subsequently "knocked down", usually by the same person who set the person up.

The game

The game was traditionally played in British pubs and fairgrounds. An Aunt Sally was originally a figurine head of an old woman with a clay pipe in her mouth, or subsequently a ball on a stick. There are also other theories on how the game started, one such theory is that a live chicken was placed on the stick, and people would throw sticks at it. Whoever killed it, won, and took home the chicken. Another theory is that in Oxfordshire Port meadow at the time of the cavaliers, the cavaliers were bored with nothing to do and formed a game with sticks and makeshift materials similar to what the game is today. The object was for players to throw sticks at the head in order to break the pipe. The game bears some resemblance to a coconut shy or skittles.

Photo of an Aunt Sally circa 1850

Today, the game of Aunt Sally is still played as a pub game in Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. The ball is on a short plinth about 10 cm high, and is known as a 'dolly'. The dolly is placed on a dog-legged metal spike a metre high and players throw sticks or short battens at the dolly, trying to knock it off without hitting the spike. Successfully hitting the dolly off is known as a "doll", however if the spike is hit first then the score does not count and is called an "iron".^{[citation needed]}

Aunt Sally featured as part of the History channel TV series Mud Men in Series 2 Episode 1 Surrey Quays as part of the history of pubs and pub games.

Other kinds of Aunt Sally

• Aunt Sally is a character in Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn who attempts to adopt and civilize Huck.

• Aunt Sally appears as a character portrayed by Una Stubbs in the television adaptation of the children's serial Worzel Gummidge, produced by Southern Television for ITV from 1979 to 1981. She is a fairground doll of the type used as a target for throwing competitions but nevertheless considers herself to be of a superior class to Worzel, a scarecrow and her frustrated suitor.

• The term "Aunt Sally" is sometimes used in Great Britain as a colloquial political idiom, indicating a false adversary or straw man set up purely for attracting negative attention and wasting an opponent's energy.

• The technique is sometimes used during planning applications when the applicant needs to show they exhausted all other options and need to create false alternatives that are easily identified as unsuitable.

See also

• Straw man
• British folk sports
• Scapegoat
• Whipping boy

References

• WorldWideWords
• Aunt Sally - The Online Guide
• TossingGames.com
• The Original Oxford Aunt Sally League
• The Official Abingdon Aunt Sally League
• Banbury Aunt Sally League
• Chipping Norton Aunt Sally League
• Bampton Aunt Sally League
• The Aunt Sally Pitch

 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aunt Sally". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.