Word: pelota
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What the audience heard was an old-fashioned opera of love, misunderstanding and renunciation. Its six scenes, all laid in the Basque country, began in a murky smuggler's hideout, ended within the pale walls of a convent. The hero, a young smuggler and pelota champion (his name, Ramuntcho, is the Basque diminutive for Raymond) is separated from his Gracieuse by the army's call, then lost to her forever through the machinations of the girl's mother, who intercepts all their letters, thus driving the brokenhearted daughter into holy orders. When Ramuntcho returns and exposes...
...they fought, ten and one-half hours more. Within full sight of the headland called Punta del Este, where Uruguayans gathered in crowds as if to watch a pelota match, Ajax and Achilles craftily slipped around Spee inshore of her, leaving the enemy silhouetted in the east by the reflected light of the setting sun, themselves under shore's gloom. Just before dark there were two sharp clashes, and it was evidently in one of those that Spee suffered a final disaster: A hit at the forefoot, at bow and waterline, so that as she went through...
...made of tightly wrapped strips of cloth wound with twine and covered like a baseball, are slightly smaller than a golf ball, have put players' eyes out. With recovering, costing about 10?, balls can be made to last for 100 years. Played like four-wall handball, kin to pelota, pallone and other Basque games, it was probably originated by bored debtors in Fleet Street prison about 1800. Like court tennis, it was soon taken over by the notably solvent, is now the luxury of a comparative handful in the U. S. on 14 courts in exclusive clubs. Main...
Originally called pelota (ball) and played with the bare hand against church walls in the Basque country three centuries ago, the game gradually evolved until three concrete walls were used instead of one, and a cesta (wicker basket shaped like a pelican's lower bill) was strapped onto the wrist to protect the hand from the sting of the fast-moving little pelota (hard as a golf ball and a little smaller than a baseball). Cubans imported the sport in 1900, called it jai alai for no other reason than that it was played at an arena in Havana...
...apron strings of Downing Street. Last week French fiscal policy had been hitched, temporarily at least, to the apron strings of the Old Lady of Thread-needle Street, pending the arrival of Finance Minister Georges Bonnet. This nimble native of Dordogne, by far the ablest player of Basque pelota in the new Cabinet, will have his work cut out for him to get French finances in shape, but he seemed certain of broad cooperation. Under one of France's new social decrees drafted by Leon Blum and published last week by the Chautemps Cabinet as one of its first...