Old English Sports, Pastimes and Customs Part 3

The proclamation of James I., called the "Book of Sports," which was renewed by King Charles I., throws some light upon the sports in vogue during his reign. It was enacted "for his good people's lawful recreation, after the end of Divine service, that his good people be not disturbed, or discouraged, from any lawful recreation, such as dancing for men and women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreations; nor from having May games, Whitsun ales, and morris dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or neglect of Divine service. And that women shall have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decorating of it, according to their old custom. But withal his Majesty doth hereby account still as prohibited all unlawful games to be used on Sundays only, as bear and bull-baiting, interludes, and at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited, bowling."

Why his Majesty should have been so very severe on the game of bowls, which is a very ancient pastime, and innocent enough, is not at first quite clear; but it appears that the numerous bowling-alleys in London were, in the sixteenth century, the resorts of very bad company, and the nests of gambling and vice. Hence the severity of King James' strictures on bowling.

The people of Lancas.h.i.+re in the time of James I. were as devoted to sports and amus.e.m.e.nt as they are now; and when the king was making a progress through Lancas.h.i.+re, "he received a pet.i.tion from some servants, labourers, mechanics, and other vulgar persons, complaining that they were debarred from dancing, playing, church-ales--in a word, from all recreations on Sundays after Divine service." King James hated Puritanism and loved recreation; so he readily granted the pet.i.tion of the Lancas.h.i.+re folk, and issued a proclamation encouraging Sunday pastimes, which is known as the famous "Book of Sports."

In Ireland on May Day Bale-fires are lighted, and to this day young men jump through the flames, and children are pa.s.sed across the embers, in order to secure them good luck during the coming year. On this day, too, the Irish kings are supposed to rise from their graves and gather together a ghostly army of rude warriors to fight for their country. The wild cries of the shadowy host, the clas.h.i.+ng of s.h.i.+elds, and the sound of drums are said to have been heard during the period of the last rebellion in Ireland.

On one of the Rogation Days, or on Ascension Day, it was the custom to go in procession round the boundaries of the parish to ask G.o.d's blessing on the fruits of the earth, and as there were few maps and divisions of land, to call to mind and pa.s.s on to the next generation the boundaries of the towns.h.i.+p or village. The choir sang hymns, and under certain trees, which were called Gospel Trees, the clergyman read the Gospel for the day, with a litany and prayers.

Sometimes boys were whipped, or b.u.mped against trees, or thrown into a river, in order to impress upon them where the boundaries were.

But they received a substantial recompense afterwards, and the whole company, when the procession was over, sat down to the perambulation dinner, and talked about their recollections of former days.

The advantages of this practice are set forth in George Herbert's description of a country parson. He says, "The country parson is a lover of old customs, if they be good and harmless. Particularly he loves procession, and maintains it, because there are contained in it four manifest advantages, 1. A blessing of G.o.d for the fruits of the earth. 2. Justice in the preservation of bounds. 3. Charity, in loving, walking, and neighbourly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences at that time, if there be any. 4. Mercy, in relieving the poor by a liberal distribution and largess, which at that time is, or ought to be, used. Wherefore he exacts of all to be present at the perambulation, and those that withdraw and sever themselves from it he mislikes, and rebukes as uncharitable and unneighbourly; and if they will not reform, presents them" (_i.e._ to the bishop for censure).

This custom is still preserved, or has been revived, in many parishes, and at Oxford the boys may be seen on Ascension Day bearing white willow-wands, and beating the bounds of some of the old city parishes.

CHAPTER VI.

JUNE.

"The woods, or some near town That is a neighbour to the bordering down, Hath drawn them thither, 'bout some l.u.s.ty sport, Or spiced wa.s.sel-bowl, to which resort All the young men and maids of many a cote, Whilst the trim minstrell strikes his merry note."

FLETCHER, _The Faithful Shepherdess_.

Whitsuntide Sports--Church-ales--Church-house--Quarter-staff --Whistling and Jingling Matches--St. John's Eve--Wrestling.

After May Day our villagers had not long to wait until the Whitsuntide holiday came round. This holiday was notorious for the "Church-ales," which were held at this season. These feasts were a means of raising money for charitable purposes. If the church needed a new roof, or some poor people were in sad straits, the villagers would decide to have a "Church-ale"; generally four times a year the feast was given, and always at Whitsuntide. The churchwardens bought, and received presents of, a large quant.i.ty of malt, which they brewed into beer, and sold to the company, and any inhabitant of the parish who did not attend had to pay a fine. Every one who was able contributed something to the entertainment. The feast was held in the church-house, a building which stood near the church.

This was the scene of many social gatherings, and is thus described by an old writer--

"In every parish was a church-house, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing provisions.

Here the housekeepers met. The young people were there, too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at b.u.t.ts, &c., the ancients (_i.e._ the old folk) sitting gravely by and looking on. All things were civil, and without scandal.

The church-ale is, doubtless, derived from the Agapai or Love Feasts, mentioned in the New Testament."

Whether the learned writer was right in his conjecture we cannot be quite certain, but church-ales subsequently degenerated into something quite different from New Testament injunctions, and were altogether prohibited on account of the excess to which they gave rise. Let us hope that all these feasts were not so bad as they were represented, and indeed in early times great reverence was attached to them, which prevented excess. The neighbours, too, would come in from the adjoining parishes and share the feast. An arbour of boughs was erected in the churchyard, called Robin Hood's Bower, where the maidens collected money for the "ales" in the same way which they employed at Hock-tide, and which was called "Hocking." The old books of St. Lawrence's Church, Reading (to which I have before referred), contain a record of this custom--"1505 A.D. Item. Received of the maidens' gathering at Whitsuntide by the tree at the church door, ij^s. vi^d." The morris-dancers and minstrels, the ballad-singers and players, were in great force on these occasions, and were entertained at the cost of the parish. In the churchwardens' account of St. Mary's, Reading, we find in the year 1557--

"Item--paid to Morris-dancers and the Minstrels, meat and drink at Whitsuntide--iii^s. iiii^d."

When the feasting had ended, archery, running races in sacks, grinning through a horse-collar (each compet.i.tor trying to make the most ludicrous grimaces), afforded amus.e.m.e.nt to the light-hearted spectators.

The game of quarter-staff is an old pastime which was a great favourite among the rustics of Berks.h.i.+re. The quarter-staff is a tough piece of wood about eight feet long, which the player grasped in the middle with one hand, while with the other he kept a loose hold midway between the middle and one end. The object of the game was, to use the forcible language of the time, to "break the head"

of the opponent. On the White Horse Hill, where Alfred fought against the Danes, and carved out on the hill-side the White Horse as a memorial of his victory, many a rural sport has been played, and at the periodical "scourings of the Horse" many a Berks.h.i.+re head broken to see who was the noted champion of the game. An old paris.h.i.+oner of mine, James of Sandhurst, was once the hero of quarter-staff in the early part of the century. The whistling match was not so dangerous a contest; the prize was conferred upon the whistler who could whistle clearest, and go through his tune while a clown, or merry-andrew, made laughable grimaces before him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: QUARTER-STAFF.]

Another diversion common at these country gatherings was the jingling match. A large circle was inclosed with ropes, in which the players took their place. All were blindfolded with the exception of one, who was the jingler, and who carried a bell in each hand, which he was obliged to keep ringing. His object was to elude the pursuit of his blinded companions, and he won the prize if he was still free when the play ceased. It was an amusing sight to see the men trying to catch the active jingler, running into each other's arms, and catching every one but the right one. When the jingling match was over, a pig with a short, well-soaped tail was turned out for the people to run after, and he who could hold it by the tail without touching any other part obtained it for his pains. There was also a game called Pigeon-holes, which appears to have been somewhat similar to our present game of bagatelle.

And so with laughter and with song the feast ended, the evening shadows fell around, and the happy rustics retired to their humble thatched-roofed homes. The proceeds of these church-ales were often considerable. "There were no rates for the poor in my grandfather's time," says one writer, "the church-ale of Whitsuntide did the business"; and whether the paris.h.i.+oners had to pay a tax for the support of the King's army, or to repair the church, or to maintain some orphan children, it was generally found "that something still remained to cover the bottom of the purse."

Of the "mysteries," or miracle plays, as they were called, which were performed in towns on Corpus Christi Day and at other times, I propose to write in another chapter; and we will now proceed to the hillsides near our villages on the eve of St. John's Day, when we should witness the lighting of large bonfires, and some curious customs connected with that ceremony. Both the old and the young people used to sally forth from the village to some neighbouring height, and there, amidst much laughter and with many a shout, they lighted the large bonfire. Then they danced round the blazing logs, and afterwards leaped through the flames, and at the close of the ceremony each person brought away with him a burning branch. This rite appears to have been a relic of Paganism. Probably the fire was originally lighted in honour of the sun, which our forefathers wors.h.i.+pped before they became Christians. The leaping through the flames had also a superst.i.tious meaning, and the simple people thought that in this way they could ward off evil spirits and prevent sickness. The Roman shepherds used to leap through the Midsummer blaze in honour of Pales. The Scandinavians lit their bonfires in honour of their G.o.ds Odin and Thor, and the leaping through the flames reminds us of the wors.h.i.+ppers of Baal and Moloch, who, as we read in the Bible, used to "pa.s.s their children through the fire" in awe of their cruel G.o.d. St. John's Day, or Midsummer Day (June 24th), was chosen because on that day the sun reaches its highest point in the zodiac. There is, however, another interpretation of the meaning of the fires on St. John's Day, as ill.u.s.trating the verse which speaks of him "as a burning and a s.h.i.+ning light" (St. John v. 35); but this interpretation was probably invented by some pious divine who endeavoured to attach a Christian meaning to an ancient heathen custom. The connection of the ceremony with the old wors.h.i.+p of the sun is indisputable. Its practice was very general in nearly all European nations, and in not very remote times from Norway to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean the glow of St. John's fires might have been seen. The Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth century forbade the custom as a heathen rite, but the Church endeavoured to win over the custom from its Pagan a.s.sociations and to attach to it a Christian signification. In the island of Jersey the older inhabitants used to light fires under large iron pots full of water, in which they placed silver articles--as spoons, mugs, &c., and then knocked the silver against the iron with the idea of scaring away all evil spirits.[11]

Sometimes bones were burnt in the fire, for we are told in a quaint homily on the Feast of St. John Baptist, that bones scared away the evil spirits in the air, since "wise clerks know well that dragons hate nothing more than the stink of burning bones, and therefore the country folk gather as many as they might find, and burned them; and so with the stench thereof they drove away the dragons, and so they were brought out of great disease."

In some most remote northern parts of England the farmer lights a wisp of straw, which he carries round his fields to protect them from the tare and darnel, the devil and witches. In some places they used to cover a wheel with straw, set it on fire, and roll it down a hill. A learned writer on antiquities tells us that the people imagined that all their ill-luck rolled away from them together with this burning wheel. All these customs are relics of the old fire and sun wors.h.i.+p, to which our forefathers were addicted. Wrestling, running races, and dancing were afterwards practised by the villagers. Wrestling is a very ancient sport, and the men of Cornwall and Devon, of Westmoreland and c.u.mberland, were famous for their skill. A "Cornish hug" is by no means a tender embrace.

Sometimes the people bore back to their homes boughs of trees, with which they adorned their doors and windows. At Oxford the quadrangle of Magdalen College was decorated with boughs on St.

John's Day, and a sermon preached from the stone pulpit in the corner of the quadrangle; this was meant to represent the preaching of St. John the Baptist in the wilderness.

At length the villagers, wearied with their exertions, retire to their cottage homes, marching in procession from the scene of their observances; and silence reigns o'er the village for a few short hours, till the sunlight summons them to their daily toil.

CHAPTER VII.

JULY.

"Swift o'er the mead with lightning speed The bounding ball flies on; And hark! the cries of victory rise For the gallant team that's won."

Cricket--Club-ball--Trap-ball--Golf--Pall-mall--Tennis-- Rush-bearing.

At this time of the year all the cricket-clubs in town and village are very busy, and matches are being played everywhere. It may not therefore be inappropriate if I tell you in this chapter of the history of that game which has become so universally popular wherever our countrymen live. On the plains of India, in Australia (as some of our English cricketers have learnt to their cost), in Egypt, wherever Englishmen go, there cricket finds a home and a hearty welcome. But it is not nearly so ancient a game as others which I have already mentioned, although it had some fairly old parents, simple and humble-minded folk, who would have been greatly astonished to see the extraordinary development of their precocious offspring.

Kent and Suss.e.x were the ancestral homes of cricket, which is thus described by an old writer--"A game most usual in Kent, with a cricket-ball bowled and struck with two cricket-bats between two wickets. The name is derived from the Saxon word _cryc_, baculus, a bat or staff; which also signifies fulcimentum, a support or prop, whence a cricket or little stool to sit upon. Cricket play among the Saxons was also called _stef-plege_ (staff-play)."

I fear that our old writer must have made a great mistake if he imagined that the Saxons ever played cricket, and I believe that the word was not known before the sixteenth century. In the records of Guildford we find that a dispute arose about the enclosure of a piece of land in the time of Elizabeth; and in the suit that arose one John Derrick stated in his evidence that he knew the place well "for fifty years or more, and that when he was a scholar in the free school at Guildford he and several of his companions did run and play there at cricket and other plays." Also in Cotgrave's French Dictionary, published in 1611, the word _crosse_ is translated "a cricket-staff, or the crooked-staff wherewith boys play at cricket."

In the eighteenth century allusions to the game become more frequent, although it was still a boy's game. It had its poet, who sang--

"Hail, cricket, glorious, manly, British game, First of all sports, be first alike in fame."

It had its calumniators, who said that it "propagated a spirit of idleness" in bad times, when people ought to work and not play, and that it encouraged gambling. But the game began to prosper, and several noted men, poets and ill.u.s.trious statesmen, recall the pleasurable memories of their prowess with the bat and ball. In a book of songs called _Pills to purge Melancholy_, published in 1719, we find the verse--

"He was the prettiest fellow At football or at cricket: At hunting chase or nimble race How featly he could p.r.i.c.k it."

In the early part of the eighteenth century the game was in a very rudimentary condition, very different from the scientific pastime it has since become. There were only two wickets, a foot high and two feet apart, with one long bail at the top. Between the wickets there was a hole large enough to contain the ball, and when the batsman made a run, he had to place the end of his bat in this hole before the wicket-keeper could place the ball there, otherwise he would be "run out."

The bat, too, was a curved, crooked arrangement very different from our present weapon. The Hambledon Club, in Hamps.h.i.+re, which has produced some famous players, seems to have been mainly instrumental in reforming and improving the game. Its members introduced a limit to the width of the bat, viz., four and a quarter inches--the standard still in force--in order to prevent players, such as a hero from Reigate, bringing bats as wide as the wicket. In 1775 they wisely introduced a middle stump, as they found the best b.a.l.l.s harmlessly flying between the wide wickets. It was feared lest this alteration would shorten the game too much, but it does not seem to have had that effect, as in an All England match against the Hambledon Club, two years later, one Aylward scored 167 runs, and stayed in two whole days. England owes much to the old Club at Hambledon for the improvements which it wrought in the game, which has become our great national pastime.

Miss Mitford, in her charming book, _Our Village_, describes the rivalry which existed between the village elevens at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and gives a sketch of a match between two Berks.h.i.+re village teams, which brought about some very happy results of a romantic nature. She tells us, too, of the comments of the rustics on the "new-fas.h.i.+oned" style of bowling which one of the team had introduced from London, which did not at all commend itself to them, but effectually took their wickets. When that celebrated company of cricketers, dressed in frock-coats and tall hats, whose portraits adorn many a pavilion, competed for the honour of All England, they were quite ignorant of "round-arm" bowling, which is, of course, an invention of modern times. Only "lobs," or "under-hands," were the order of the day. It has been stated that we are indebted to the ladies for the important discovery of the modern style of delivering the ball. The story may be legendary, but I have read somewhere that the elder Lillywhite used to practise cricket all through the winter, and that his daughters used to bowl to him.

During the bitter cold of a winter's day they wore their shawls, and found it more convenient to bowl with extended arms than in the old method. Their b.a.l.l.s so delivered used to puzzle their father, and often take his wicket; so he began to imitate them, and introduced his new method into matches, and thus the age of round-arm bowling was inaugurated. I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, and only tell it as it was told to me.[12] At any rate Lillywhite was the father of modern bowling, which would have startled and considerably puzzled the veteran cricketers in the early part of the present century.

The proper parent of cricket seems to have been club-ball, which is a very old game, and of which there is a picture in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, dated 1344 A.D. It represents a female throwing a ball to a man who is in the act of raising his bat to strike it.

Behind the woman, at a little distance, appear several other figures of men and women waiting attentively to catch or stop the ball when hit by the batsman. There is a still more ancient picture of two club-ball players, representing the batsman holding the ball also and preparing to hit it, while the other player holds his hands in readiness to catch the ball. He has the appearance of a very careful fielder. Here we have the rudimentary idea of cricket; but how they scored their game, what rules they had, we cannot determine.

Stool-ball claims also to be an ancestor of cricket, and consists in one player defending a stool with his hand from being hit by a ball bowled by another player. Here is a simple form of the modern game, the stool being used as a wicket, and the hand for a bat.

Trap-ball is a much older game than cricket, and can be traced to the beginning of the fourteenth century. The modern game differs little from that which the old pictures describe, except in the shape of the trap which holds the ball. But the most ancient of all games of this nature is golf, or goff (as it used to be spelt), which was played with a crooked club or staff, sometimes called a bandy. Scotsmen are very fond of this game, which has lately migrated into England and found many admirers. It was probably introduced into Scotland from Holland, and was a popular pastime as early as 1457. In spite of proclamations encouraging archery, and forbidding golf, it continued to flourish; it has a long list of royal patrons; and the Stuart monarchs seem to have been as enthusiastic over the game as all true golfers ought to be. Poets have sung the praises of golf, and the glory of the heroes who drove their b.a.l.l.s along St. Andrew's Links, or those of East Neuk. The object of the game is to drive the ball into certain holes in the fewest number of strokes. James II. was an expert golfer, and had only one rival, an Edinburgh shoemaker, named Paterson.