20 June: Juggling

The Saturday nearest to June 17 is World Juggling Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about juggling.

1. Juggling has been around a long time. The earliest depiction of juggling is painted on an Egyptian tomb dating from around 2000 BC. The drawings depict women juggling balls and performing tricks like juggling with their hands crossed.
2. The words juggling and juggler derive from the Middle English word "jogelen" which means "to entertain by performing tricks".
3. We tend to see juggling as light-hearted entertainment, but juggling has been known to play a part in battles and wars. Ancient Chinese warriors would show off to their enemies by juggling before a battle. The 2,300 year old Chinese Book of Lie Zi describes a warrior juggling seven swords at once. There was even a juggler at the Battle of Hastings. His name was Taillefer, and he was the warrior-bard of William the Conqueror. He cropped up in two of my sources but with a slightly different story. In one, he performed a juggling trick with his sword before running through an English soldier with it. In the other, he broke ranks to taunt the British with his juggling skill, but only managed to wound one Brit before getting an arrow in the head.
4. There has even been religious significance attached to juggling. The Talmud speaks of juggling rabbis. One, named Shmuel, could juggle eight glasses of Wine without spilling a drop and performed for King Shapur of Babylon at the Water-Drawing Festival. Another, Rabban Simon ben Gamliel juggled eight torches of Gold at similar events. People living in Tonga when Captain Cook visited in the 1700s, discovered women sitting in a circle and juggling nuts, passing them to one another with incredible speed and skill. The women sang songs about their ancestors and competed to see who could keep the most nuts up the longest. Turned out this was tied into an ancient legend which said juggling was a way to appease the goddess of the underworld. If the women didn't juggle every day the goddess would get upset and send earthquakes and demons to pluck out people's eyes.
5. St Julian the Hospitaller is the patron saint of jugglers. Julian built a hospital after accidentally murdering both his mother and father due to a pagan curse. He's also the patron saint of carnival workers, Clowns, repentant murderers and fiddle-players.
6. The accolade of being the greatest juggler of all time goes to Enrico Rastelli (1896 – 1931), who could juggle ten balls at a time. Strangely, however, he never mastered the art of juggling nine balls. Charles Hoey is another notable juggler, the first to juggle with four clubs. However, as soon as he stopped juggling, he'd drop them, so the curtain had to be brought down while he was still juggling.
7. In the late 19th century, Salerno (Adolf Behrend) was one juggler who developed the 'gentleman juggler' style. Gentleman jugglers would attend parties in evening wear and entertain guests by juggling with dinner party items such as plates, bottles, loaves of Bread, hats, canes and Chairs.
8. Juggling is a workout for both your body and your Brain. Juggling burns 280 calories an hour, which is about the same as you'd burn playing Badminton. It's also been proven to increase hand-eye co-ordination by up to 10%, promote the use of both sides of the brain and increase Blood flow to the grey matter, which increases as a result, in as little as a week. Research has also shown that juggling can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
9. If the above fact has inspired you to take up juggling, scarves are said to be the easiest objects to learn with. Clubs are said to be easier than balls, because they take less co-ordination to catch, and rings are easiest to juggle in larger numbers because they are light and you can hold several at a time.
10. In the 1500’s, jugglers in Ireland were required by law to pay compensation to any audience members hurt by juggling accidents.

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