PASTIMES USUALLY EXERCISED IN TOWNS AND CITIES, OR PLACES ADJOINING TO THEM. Every kind of military combat made in conformity to certain rules, and practised by the knights and their esquires for diversion or gallantry, was anciently called a tournament: yet these amusements frequently differed materially from each other, and have been distinguished accordingly by various denominations in the modern times. They may however, I think, be all of them included under the four following heads; tilting and combating at the quintain, tilting at the ring, tournaments, and justs. All these, and especially the two last, were favourite pastimes with the nobility of the middle ages. The progress and decline of tournaments in this country has already been mentioned in a general way; II.—THE QUINTAIN.Tilting or combating at the quintain is certainly a military exercise of high antiquity, and antecedent, I doubt not, to the justs and tournaments. The quintain, originally, was nothing more than the trunk of a tree or post set up for the practice of the tyros in chivalry. III.—VARIOUS QUINTAINS.The quintain in its original state was not confined to the exercise of young warriors on horseback: it was an object of practice for them on foot, in order to acquire strength and skill in assaulting an enemy with their swords, spears, and battle-axes. I met with a manuscript in the Royal Library, Below is the quintain in the form of a Saracen, from Pluvinel. An English poet who has taken up the subject of chivalry under the title of "Knighthood and Battle," Of fight, the disciplyne, and exercise Was this. To have a pale or pile upright Of mannys hight, Therewith a bacheler, or a yong knyght, Shal first be taught to stonde and lerne to fight.— And fanne of doubil wight, tak him his shelde Of doubil wight, a mace of tre This fanne and mace whiche either doubil wight, Of shelde, and swayed in conflicte, or bataile, Shal exercise as well swordmen, as knyghtes. And noe man, as they sayn, is seyn prevaile, In field, or in castell, thoughe he assayle, That with the pile, nathe Thus writeth Werrouris olde and wyse. Have eche his pile or pale upfixed fast, And as it were uppon his mortal foe; With mightyness and weapon most be cast To fight stronge, that he ne skape hym fro. On hym with shield, and sword avised so, Lest of thyne own dethe thou be to wite. Beare at the breste, or sperne him one the side. With myghte knyghtly poost, Lepe o thy foe; looke if he dare abide: Will he not flee? wounde him; make woundis wide, Hew of his honde, his legge, his theyhs, his armys, It is the Turk, though he be sleyn noon harm is. Both the treatises commend the use of arms of double weight upon these occasions, in order to acquire strength, and give the warrior greater facility in wielding the weapons of the ordinary size; to which the poet adds, And sixty pounds of weight 'tis good to bear. The lines just now quoted evidently allude to the quintain in the form of a Turk or Saracen, which, I presume, was sometimes used upon this occasion. The pel was also set up as a mark to cast at with spears, as the same poet informs us: A dart of more wight then is mester, Take hym in honde and teche him it to stere; And cast it at the pile as at his foo, So that it conte and right uppon him go. And likewise for the practice of archery: Set hert and eye uppon the pile or pale, Shoot nyghe or onne; and if so be thou ride On horse, is eck Smyte in the face, or breste, or back or side, Compelle to fle, or falle, yf that he bide. IV.—DERIVATION OF QUINTAIN.This exercise is said to have received the name of quintain from Quinctus or Quintas the inventor, In the code of laws established by the emperor Justinian, the quintain is mentioned as a well known sport; and permitted to be continued, upon condition that it should be performed with pointless spears, contrary to the ancient usage, which it seems required them to have heads or points. V.—THE WATER QUINTAIN.To the best of my recollection, Fitzstephen is the first of our writers who speaks of an exercise of this kind, which he tells us was usually practised by the young Londoners upon the water during the Easter holidays. A pole or mast, he says, is fixed in the midst of the Thames, with a shield strongly attached to it; and a boat being previously placed at some distance, is driven swiftly towards it by the force of oars and the violence of the tide, having a young man standing in the prow, who holds a lance in his hand with which he is to strike the shield: and if he be dexterous enough to break the lance against it and retain his place, his most sanguine wishes are satisfied: on the contrary, if the lance be not broken, he is sure to be thrown into the water, and the vessel goes away without him, but at the same time two other boats are stationed near to the shield, and furnished with many young persons who are in readiness to rescue the champion from danger. It appears to have been a very popular pastime; for the bridge, the wharfs, and the houses near the river, were crowded with people on this occasion, who come, says the author, to see the sports and make themselves merry. VI.—RUNNING AT THE QUINTAIN PRACTISED BY THE LONDONERS, AND WHY.Matthew Paris mentions the quintain by name, but he speaks of it in a cursory manner as a well known pastime, and probably would have said nothing about it, had not the following circumstance given him the occasion. In the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Henry III. A.D. 1254, the young Londoners, who, he tells us, were expert horsemen, assembled together to run at the quintain, and set up a peacock as a reward for the best performer. The king then keeping his court at Westminster, some of his domestics came into the city to see the pastime, where they behaved in a very disorderly manner, and treated the Londoners with much insolence, calling them cowardly knaves and rascally clowns, which the Londoners resented by beating them soundly; the king, however, was incensed at the indignity put upon his servants, and not taking into consideration the provocation on their parts, fined the city one thousand marks. We may here observe, that the rules of chivalry, at this time, would not admit of any person, under the rank of an esquire, to enter the lists as a combatant at the justs and tournaments; for which reason the burgesses and yeomen had recourse to the exercise of the quintain, which was not prohibited to any class of the people: but, as the performers were generally young men whose finances would not at all times admit of much expense, the quintain was frequently nothing better than a stake fixed into the ground, with a flat piece of board made fast to the upper part of it, as a substitute for the shield that had been used in times remote; and such as could not procure horses, contented themselves with running at this mark on foot. The following representation of a lad mounted on a wooden horse with four wheels, and drawn by two of his comrades tilting at the immoveable quintain, is taken from a MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, dated 1344. VII.—MANNER OF EXERCISING WITH THE QUINTAIN.But to return: Stow, in his Survey of London, having related the above-mentioned disturbance from Matthew Paris, goes on as follows: "This exercise of running at the quintain, was practised in London, as well in the summer as in the winter, but especially at the feast of Christmas. I have seen," continues my author, "a quintain set upon Cornhill by Leadenhall, where VIII.—THE QUINTAIN, A PASTIME BEFORE QUEEN ELIZABETH.Among other sports exhibited for the amusement of queen Elizabeth, during her residence at Kenilworth Castle, in Warwickshire, then the seat of the earl of Leicester, who entertained her majesty there for several days, A.D. 1575, there was, says Laneham, "a solemn country bridal; when in the castle was set up a comely quintane for feats at armes, where, in a great company of young men and lasses, the bridegroom had the first course at the quintane, and broke his spear 'tres hardiment' (very boldly, or with much courage). But his mare in his manage did a little stumble, that much adoe had his manhood to sit in his saddle. But after the bridegroom had made his course, ran the rest of the band, awhile in some order, but soon after tag and rag, cut and long tail; where the speciality of the sport was to see how some for his slackness had a good bob with the bag, and some for his haste to topple downright, and come tumbling to the post: some striving so much at the first setting out, that it seemed a question between man and beast, whether the race should be performed on horseback or on foot; and some put forth with spurs, would run his race byas, among the IX.—TILTING AT A WATER BUTT.Below is a representation from a MS. in the Bodleian Library, dated 1343, of three boys tilting jointly, at a tub full of water, which is to be struck in such a manner as not to throw it over them. I presume they are learners only, and that therefore they are depicted without their clothes; they undressed themselves, I apprehend, in order to save their garments from being wetted in case the attempt should prove unsuccessful. This farcical pastime, according to Menestrier, was practised occasionally in Italy, where, he says, a large bucket filled with water is set up, against which they tilt their lances; and if the stroke be not made with great dexterity, the bucket is overset and the lanceman thoroughly drenched with the contents. X.—THE HUMAN QUINTAIN.I shall here say a few words concerning the human quintain, which has escaped the notice of most of the writers upon this subject; it is, however, very certain that the military men in the middle ages would sometimes practise with their lances at a man completely armed; whose business it was to act upon the This representation is justified by the concurrent testimony of an ancient author, cited by Ducange, who introduces one knight saying to another, "I do not by any means esteem you sufficiently valiant (si bons chevalier) for me to take a lance and just with you; therefore I desire you to retire some distance from me, and then run at me with all your force, and I will be your quintain." Pawne thou no glove for challenge of the deed, Nor make thy quintaine other's armed head. XI.—EXERCISES PROBABLY DERIVED FROM THE QUINTAIN.The living quintain, according to the representation just given, is seated upon a stool with three legs without any support behind; and the business, I presume, of the tilter, was to overthrow him; while, on his part, he was to turn the stroke of the pole or lance on one side with his shield, and by doing so with adroitness occasion the fall of his adversary. Something of a similar kind of exercise, though practised in a different way, appears in the following engraving, where a man seated, holds up one of his feet, opposed to the foot of another man, who standing upon one leg endeavours to thrust him backwards. And again where his opponent is seated in a swing and drawn back by a third person, so that the rope being left at liberty in the swing, the man of course descended with great force, and striking the foot of his antagonist with much violence, no doubt very frequently overthrew him. The two last sports were probably never exhibited by military men, but by rustics and others in imitation of the human quintain. The contest between the two figures below, seems to depend upon the breaking of the stick which both of them hold, or is a struggle to overthrow each other. The following engraving from a manuscript book of prayers of the fourteenth century, in the possession of Mr. Douce, represents two men with a pole or headless spear, who grasp it at either end, and are contending which shall dispossess the other of his hold. This feat the single figure, represented below from the Oxford MS. of 1344, seems to have achieved, and is bearing away the pole in triumph. XII.—RUNNING AT THE RING.Tilting or, as it is most commonly called, running at the ring, was also a fashionable pastime in former days; the ring is evidently derived from the quintain, and indeed the sport itself is frequently called running or tilting at the quintain. With the Italians, says Du Cange, quintano sometimes signifies a ring, hence the Florentines say, "correr alla quintana," which with us is called running at the ring: the learned author produces several quotations to the same purpose. Above is the form of the ring, with the sheath, and the manner in which it was attached to the upright supporter, from Pluvinel. The letter A indicates the ring detached from the sheath; B represents the sheath with the ring inserted and attached to the upright post, in which there are several holes to raise or lower the ring to suit the conveniency of the performer. The following engraving, also from Pluvinel, represents the method of performing the exercise. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the pastime of running at the ring was reduced to a science. Pluvinel, who treats this subject at large, says, the length of the course was measured, and marked out according to the properties of the horses that were to run: for one of the swiftest kind, one In tilting at the ring, three courses were allowed to each candidate; and he who thrust the point of his lance through it the oftenest, or, in case no such thing was done, struck it the most frequently, was the victor: but if it so happened, that none of them did either the one or the other, or that they were equally successful, the courses were to be repeated until the superiority of one put an end to the contest. XIII.—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TOURNAMENTS AND JUSTS.Tournaments and justs, though often confounded with each other, differed materially. The tournament was a conflict with many knights, divided into parties and engaged at the same time. The just was a separate trial of skill, when only one man was opposed to another. The latter was frequently included in the former, but not without many exceptions; for the just, according to the laws of chivalry, might be made exclusive of the tournament. In the romantic ages, both these diversions were held in the highest esteem, being sanctioned by the countenance and example of the nobility, and prohibited to all below the rank of an esquire; but at the same time the justs were considered as less honourable than the tournaments; for the knight who had paid his fees and been admitted to the latter, had a right to engage in the former without any further demand, but he who had paid the fees for justing only, was by no means exempted from the fees belonging to the tournament, as will be found in the laws relative to the lance, sword, and helmet, a little further on. XIV. ORIGIN OF THE TOURNAMENT.It is an opinion generally received, that the tournament originated from a childish pastime practised by the Roman youths Cornea bina ferunt prÆfixa hastilia ferro.—Æneid. lib. v. l. 556. Having passed in review before their parents, upon a signal given, they divided themselves into three distinct companies; and each company consisted of twelve champions exclusive of its appropriate leader, when, according to Trapp's translation, which if not so poetical is more literal than Dryden's, the tutor of Ascanius, and overseer of the sports, ———Epityden, from far Loud with a shout, and with his sounding lash The signal gave: they equally divide, The three commanders open their brigades In sep'rate bodies: straight recall'd they wheel Their course, and onward bear their hostile darts. Then diff'rent traverses on various grounds, And diff'rent counter traverses they form; Orbs within orbs alternately involve, And raise th' effigy of a fight in arms. Now show their backs in flight—now furious turn Their darts;—now all in peace together ride. Under the denomination of the first emperors, these games were publicly practised by the young nobility in the circus at Rome. The same kind of sports, or others bearing close resemblance to them, were established in this kingdom in the twelfth century, and probably at a much earlier period. Fitzstephen, an author then living, informs us, "that every Sunday in Lent, immediately after dinner, it was customary for great crowds of young Londoners mounted on war horses, well trained, to perform the necessary turnings and evolutions, to ride into the fields in distinct bands, armed hastilibus ferro dempto, with shields and headless lances; where they exhibited the representation of battles, and went through a variety of warlike exercises: at the same time many of the young noblemen who had not received the honour of knighthood, came from the king's court, and from Nunc spicula vertunt infensi.—Æneid. lib. v. l. 586. The young Londoners in all probability went further, and actually tilted one against the other. At any rate, the frequent practice of this exercise must have taught them, insensibly as it were, to become excellent horsemen. XV.—THE TROY GAME.I am clearly of opinion, that the justs and tournaments arose by slow degrees from the exercises appointed for the instruction of the military tyros in using their arms, but which of the two had the preeminence in point of antiquity cannot easily be determined; we know that both of them were in existence at the time the Troy game was practised by the citizens of London, and also that they were not permitted to be exercised in this kingdom. In the middle ages, when the tournaments were in their splendour, the Troy game was still continued, though in a state of improvement, and distinguished by a different denomination it was then called in Latin, behordicum, and in French, bohourt or behourt, and was a kind of lance game, in which the young nobility exercised themselves, to acquire address in handling of their arms, and to prove their strength. Some authors, and with great appearance of truth, derive this word from burdis or bordis, to jest, joke, or make game, and therefore it will properly signify a playful pastime, or combat, such as youth might engage in. Emmi le pre ot quintaine levÉe. Li jouvencel behordent par la prÉe. XVI.—TOURNAMENTS.Our word tournament, or tournoyement, which signifies to turn or wheel about in a circular manner, The following quotation from an ancient manuscript romance, in the Harleian collection, entitled Ipomydon, In some instances the champions depended upon their military skill and horsemanship, and frequently upon their bodily strength; but at all times it was highly disgraceful to be unhorsed, by whatever exertion it might be effected. Thomas of Walsingham, one of our own historians, tells us, XVII.—LISTS AND BARRIERS.It was a considerable time after the establishment of justs and tournaments, before the combatants thought of making either lists or barriers; they contented themselves, says Menestrier, XVIII.—WHEN THE TOURNAMENT WAS FIRST PRACTISED.It is impossible to ascertain the precise period when tournaments first made their appearance; nor is it less difficult to determine by whom they were invented. Peacham, on the authority of Nicetas, tells us, that the emperor Emanuel Comminus, at the siege of Constantinople, invented tilts and tournaments; XIX.—THE TOURNAMENT IN ENGLAND.It seems to be certain, that tournaments were held in France and Normandy before the conquest, and, according to our own writers, they were not permitted to be practised in this country for upwards of sixty years posterior to that event. The manner of performing the tournament, as then used, says Lambarde, "not being at the tilt, as I think, but at random and in the open field, was accounted so dangerous to the persons having to do therein, that sundry popes forbad it by decree; and the kings of this realm before king Stephen would not suffer it to be frequented within their land, so that such as for exercise of this feat of arms were desirous to prove themselves, were driven to pass over the seas, and to perform it in some different place in a foreign country." XX.—LAWS AND ORDINANCES OF JUSTS AND TOURNAMENTS.All military men, says Fauchet, In one of the Harleian manuscripts, In the document before us, it is said, that he who shall best resist the strokes of his adversary, and return them with most adroitness on the party of Clarencieux, shall receive a very rich sword, and he who shall perform in like manner the best on the part of Norroys, shall be rewarded with an helmet equally valuable. On the morning of the day appointed for the tournament, the arms, banners, and helmets of all the combatants shall be exposed at their stations, and the speakers present at the place of combat by ten of the clock, where they shall examine the arms and approve or reject them at their pleasure; the examination being finished, and the arms returned to the owners, the baron who is the challenger, shall then cause his banner to be placed at the beginning of the parade, and the blazon of his arms to be nailed to the roof of the pavilion: The kings at arms and the heralds are then commanded by the speakers to go from pavilion to pavilion, crying aloud, "To achievement, knights and esquires, to achievement;" XXI.—PAGES AND PERQUISITES OF THE KINGS AT ARMS, &c.Every knight or esquire performing in the tournament, was permitted to have one page, armed, within the lists, but without a truncheon or any other defensive weapon, to wait upon him and give him his sword, or truncheon, as occasion might require; and also in case of any accident happening to his armour, to amend the same. In after times, three servitors were allowed for this purpose. The laws of the tournament permitted any one of the combatants to unhelm himself at pleasure, if he was incommoded by the heat; none being suffered to assault him in any way, until he had replaced his helmet at the command of the speakers. The kings at arms, and the heralds who proclaimed the tournament, had the privilege of wearing the blazon of arms of those by whom the sport was instituted; besides which they were entitled to six ells of scarlet cloth as their fee, and had all their expenses defrayed during the continuation of the tournament: by the law of arms they had a right to the helmet of XXII.—PRELIMINARIES OF THE TOURNAMENT.An illumination to a manuscript romance in the Royal Library, The action of the two combatants, who have not yet received their weapons, seems to be that of appealing to heaven in proof of their having no charm to protect them, and no inclination to make use of any unlawful means to secure the conquest; which I believe was a ceremony usually practised upon such occasions. In the reign of Henry V. a statute was enacted by the parliament, containing the following regulations relative to the tournaments, which regulations were said to have been established at the request of all the nobility of England. XXIII.—LISTS FOR ORDEAL COMBATS.The lists for the tilts and tournaments resembled those, I doubt not, appointed for the ordeal combats, which, according to the rules established by Thomas, duke of Gloucester, uncle to Richard II., were as follows: "The king shall find the field to fight in, and the lists shall be made and devised by the constable; and it is to be observed, that the list must be sixty paces long and forty paces broad, set up in good order, and the ground within hard, stable, and level, without any great stones or other impediments; also that the lists must be made with one door to the east, and another to the west, and strongly barred about with good bars seven feet high or more, so that a horse may not be able to leap over them." XXIV.—RESPECT PAID TO LADIES IN THE TOURNAMENT.After the conclusion of the tournament, the combatants, as we have seen above, returned to their dwellings; but in the evening they met again in some place appropriated for the purpose, where they were joined by the ladies, and others of the nobility who had been spectators of the sports; and the time, we are told, was passed in feasting, dancing, singing, and making merry. But, "after the noble supper and dancing," according to the ancient ordinance above quoted, the speakers of the tournament called together the heralds appointed on both parties, and demanded from them alternately, the names of those who had best performed upon the opposite sides; the double list of names was then presented to the ladies who had been present at the pastime, and the decision was referred to them respecting the awardment of the prizes; Neither was this the only deference that was paid to the fair sex by the laws of the tournament, for we are told, that if a knight conducted himself with any impropriety, or transgressed the ordinances of the sport, he was excluded from the lists with a sound beating, which was liberally bestowed upon him by the other knights with their truncheons, to punish his temerity, and to teach him to respect the honour of the ladies and the rights of chivalry; the unfortunate culprit had no other resource in such case for escaping without mischief, but by supplicating the mercy of the fair sex, and humbly intreating them to interpose their authority on his behalf, because the suspension of his punishment depended entirely upon their intercession. XXV.—JUSTS INFERIOR TO TOURNAMENTS.The just or lance-game, in Latin justa, and in French jouste, which some derive from jocare, because it was a sort of sportive combat, undertaken for pastime only, differed materially, as before observed, from the tournament, the former being often included in the latter, and usually took place when the grand tournamental conflict was finished. But at the same time it was perfectly consistent with the rules of chivalry, for the justs to be held separately; it was, however, considered as a pastime inferior to the tournament, for which reason a knight, who had paid his fees for permission to just, was not thereby exempted from the fees of the tournament; but, on the contrary, if he had discharged his duties at the tournament, he was privileged to just without being liable to any further demand. This distinction seems to have arisen from the weapons used, the sword being appropriated to the tournament, and the lance to the just, and so it is stated in an old document cited by Du Cange: XXVI.—THE ROUND TABLE.The just, as a military pastime, is mentioned by William of Malmsbury, and said to have been practised in the reign of king Stephen. In the eighth year of the reign of Edward I., Roger de Mortimer, XXVII.—NATURE OF THE JUSTS.The cessation of the round table occasioned little or no alteration respecting the justs which had been practised by the knights belonging to it; they continued to be fashionable throughout the annals of chivalry, and latterly superseded the tournaments, which is by no means surprising, when we recollect that the one was a confused engagement of many knights together, and the other a succession of combats between two only at one time, which gave them all an equal opportunity of showing individually their dexterity and attracting the general notice. In the justs the combatants most commonly used spears without heads of iron; and the excellency of the performance consisted in striking the opponent upon the front of his helmet, so as to beat him backwards from his horse or break the spear. Froissart[2] mentions a trick used by Reynaud de Roy, at a tilting match between him and John de Holland: he fastened his helmet so slightly upon his head that it gave way, and was beaten off by every stroke that was made upon the vizor with the lance of John of Holland, and of course the shock he received was not so great as it would have been, had he made the helmet fast to the cuirass; this artifice was objected to by the English on the part of Holland; but John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who was present, permitted Roy to use his pleasure; though he at the same time declared, that for his part, he should prefer a contrary practice, and have his helmet fastened as strongly as possible. And again the same historian, speaking of a justing between Below is a representation of the just, taken from a manuscript in the Royal Library, This delineation was made before the introduction of the barrier, which was a boarded railing erected in the midst of the lists, but open at both ends, and between four and five feet in height. In performing the justs, the two combatants rode on XXVIII.—JUSTS, PECULIARLY IN HONOUR OF THE LADIES.We have seen that the privilege of distributing the prizes and remitting the punishment of offenders, was by the laws of the tournament invested with the fair sex, but at the justs their authority was much more extensive. In the days of chivalry the justs were usually made in honour of the ladies, who presided as judges paramount over the sports, and their determinations were in all cases decisive; hence in the spirit of romance, arose the necessity for every "true knight" to have a favourite fair one, who was not only esteemed by him as the paragon of beauty and of virtue, but supplied the place of a tutelar saint, to whom he paid his vows and addressed himself in the day of peril; or it seems to have been an established doctrine, that love made valour perfect, and incited the heroes to undertake great enterprises. "Oh that my lady saw me," said one of them as he was mounting a breach at the head of his troops and driving the enemy before him. The French writer St. Foix, who mentions this, XXIX.—GREAT SPLENDOUR OF THESE SPORTS ATTRACTIVE TO THE NOBILITY.At the celebration of these pastimes, the lists were superbly decorated, and surrounded by the pavilions belonging to the champions, ornamented with their arms, banners, and banerolls. The scaffolds for the reception of the nobility of both sexes who came as spectators, and those especially appointed for the royal family, The tournament and the just, and especially the latter, afforded to those who were engaged in them, an opportunity of appearing before the ladies to the greatest advantage; they might at once display their taste and opulence by the costliness and elegancy of their apparel, and their prowess as soldiers; therefore, these pastimes became fashionable among the nobility; and it was probably for the same reason that they were prohibited to the commoners. XXX.—TOYS FOR INITIATING CHILDREN IN THESE SPORTS.Persons of rank were taught in their childhood to relish such exercises as were of a martial nature, and the very toys that were put into their hands as playthings, were calculated to bias the mind in their favour. On the opposite page the reader will find two views of a knight on horseback, completely equipped for the just; four wheels originally were attached to the pedestal, which has a hole in the front for the insertion of a cord. The knight and his horse are both made with brass; the spear and the wheels are wanting in the original, but the hole in which the spear was inserted, still remains under the right arm, and it is supplied upon the print by something like it placed in the proper situation. This curious figure, which probably was made in the fifteenth century, is in the possession of sir Frederic Eden, with whose permission this copy, about the same size as the original, makes its appearance here. The man represented by the figures in the preceding engraving may be readily separated from the horse, and is so contrived as to be thrown backwards by a smart blow upon the top of the shield or the front of his helmet, and replaced again with much ease: two such toys were requisite; each of them having a string made fast in the front of the pedestal, being then placed at a distance in opposition the one to the other, they were violently drawn together in imitation of two knights tilting; and by the concussion of the spears and shields, if dexterously managed, one or both of the men were cast to the ground. Sometimes, as we may see by the subjoined figure from a curious engraving on wood by Hans Burgmair, which makes one of a series of prints representing the history and achievements of the emperor Maximilian the First, in the possession of Francis Douce, esq. these toys were made without wheels, and pushed by the hand upon a table towards each other; but in both cases the effect was evidently the same. XXXI.—BOAT JUSTS, OR TILTING ON THE WATER.It has been previously observed, that all persons below the rank of an esquire were excluded from the justs and the tournaments; but the celebration of these pastimes attracted the common mind in a very powerful manner, and led to the institution of sports, that bore at least some resemblance to them: tilting at the quintain was generally practised at a very early period, Here we may also add the boat justs, or tilting upon the water. The representation of a pastime of this kind is given below, from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Royal Library. The conqueror at these justs was the champion who could dexterously turn aside the blow of his antagonist with his shield, and at the same time strike him with his lance in such a manner as to overthrow him into the river, himself remaining unmoved from his station; and perhaps not a little depended upon the skill of the rowers. XXXII.—CHALLENGES TO ALL COMERS.I shall now conclude this long chapter with the two following extracts from a manuscript in the Harleian Collection. When Henry VII. created his second son Henry prince of Wales, four gentlemen offered their service upon the occasion. First, they made a declaration that they do not undertake this enterprise in any manner of presumption, but only "for the laude and honour of the feaste, the pleasure of the ladyes; and their owne learning, and exercise of deedes of armes, and to ensewe the ancient laudable customs." They then promised to be ready at Westminster on a given day, the twenty-fourth of November, to keep the justs in a place appointed for that purpose by the king. To be there by "eleven of the clock before noone to answer all gentlemen commers, and to runne with every commer one after another, six courses ensewingly; and to continue that daye as long as it shal like the kynges grace, and to tilt with such speares as he shall ordeyn, of the which speares, the commers shall have the choise: but if the said six courses by every one of the commers shall be performed, and the day not spent in pleasure and sport according to the effect of these articles, it shall then be lawful for the said commers to begin six other courses, and so continue one after another as long as it shall be at the king's pleasure. If it shall happen to any gentleman that his horse fayleth him, or himself be unarmed in such wise as he cannot conveniently accomplish the whole courses, then it shall be lawful for his felowe to finish up the courses." Again, they promise upon a second day, the twenty-ninth of November, to be in readiness to mount their horses at the same place and hour as before, to tourney with four other gentlemen, "Whosoever," continues the Harleian manuscript, "shall certifye and give knowledge of his name and of his comming to one of the three kings of arms, whether it be to the justs or at the tourney, he shall be first answered, the states alwayes reserved which shall have the preheminence. If any one of the said commers shall think the swordes or spears be too easy for him, the said four gentlemen will be redye to answer him or them after their owne minde, the king's licence obteyned in that behalf." The gentlemen then entreat the king to sign the articles with his own hand, as sufficient licence for the heralds to publish the same in such places as might be thought requisite. The king accepted their offer, and granted their petition; at the same time he promised to reward the best performer at the justs royal with a ring of gold set with a ruby; and the best performer at the tournament with another golden ring set with a diamond, equal in value to the former. Upon some particular occasions the strokes with the sword were performed on foot, and so were the combats with the axes; the champions having, generally, a barrier of wood breast-high between them. It is not my design to enter deeply upon the origin and progress of scenic exhibitions in England: this subject has already been so ably discussed, that very little new matter can be found to excite the public attention: I shall, therefore, be as brief as possible, and confine myself chiefly to the lower species of comic pastimes, many of which may justly claim the sanction of high antiquity. II.—MIRACLE PLAYS, DRAMAS FROM SCRIPTURE, &c. CONTINUED SEVERAL DAYS.The theatrical exhibitions in London, in the twelfth century, were called Miracles, because they consisted of sacred plays, or representations of the miracles wrought by the holy confessors, and the sufferings by which the perseverance of the martyrs was manifested. According to the Wife of Bath's prologue in the Canterbury Tales, the miracle plays in Chaucer's days were exhibited during the season of Lent, and sometimes a sequel of scripture histories was carried on for several days. In the reign of Richard II., A.D. 1391, the parish clerks of London put forth a play at Skinners Wells, near Smithfield, which continued three days; the king, queen, and many of the nobility, being present at the performance. III.—THE COVENTRY PLAY.The last of these performances, no doubt, bore a close analogy to the well known mystery entitled Corpus Christi, or Ludus CoventriÆ, the Coventry Play; transcripts of this play, nearly if not altogether coeval with the time of its representation, are yet in existence; one in particular is preserved in the Cotton Library. "Ego sum de Alpha et Omega principium et finis. "My name is knowyn God and Kynge, My worke for to make now wyl I wende, In myself restyth my reyneynge, It hath no gynnyg ne non ende." The angels then enter, singing from the church service, "To Thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein; To Thee the Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts." Lucifer next makes his appearance, and desires to know if the hymn they sang was in honour of God or in honour of him? The good angels readily reply, in honour of God; the evil angels incline to worship Lucifer, and he presumes to seat himself in the throne of the Deity; who commands him to depart from heaven to hell, which dreadful sentence he is compelled to obey, and with his wicked associates descends to the lower regions. I have given a much fuller account of this curious mystery in the third volume of the Manners and Customs of the English People, with long extracts, and from several others nearly equal in antiquity, to which the reader is referred. This play was acted by the Friars Minors, or Mendicant Friars, of Coventry; and commenced on Corpus Christi day, whence it received its title. Dugdale says, IV.—MYSTERIES DESCRIBED.The mysteries often consisted of single subjects, and made but one performance. In the Bodleian Library at Oxford "Most dowtyd man, I am lyvynge upon the grounde, Goodly besene with many a ryche harlement; My pere on lyve I trow ys nott yfound Thorow the world, fro the oryent to the occydent." The interlocutors, besides the poet who speaks the prologue, and Saul, are Caiaphas, Ananias, first and second soldiers, the "Stabularyus," or hostler, the servant, and Belial. V.—MYSTERIES, HOW ENLIVENED.Notwithstanding the seriousness of the subjects that constituted these mysteries, it seems clear that they were not exhibited without a portion of pantomimical fun to make them palatable to the vulgar taste; and indeed the length and the dulness of the speeches required some such assistance to enliven them, and keep the spectators in good humour; and this may be the reason why the mysteries are in general much shorter than the modern plays. Beelzebub seems to have been the principal comic actor, assisted by his merry troop of under-devils, who, with variety of noises, strange gestures, and contortions of the body, excited the laughter of the populace. VI.—THE FOOL IN PLAYS, WHENCE DERIVED—MORALITIES DESCRIBED.When the mysteries ceased to be played, the subjects for the drama were not taken from historical facts, but consisted of moral reasonings in praise of virtue and condemnation of vice, on which account they were called Moralities; and these performances requiring some degree of invention, laid the foundation for our modern comedies and tragedies. The dialogues were carried on by allegorical characters, such as Good Doctrine, Charity, Faith, Prudence, Discretion, Death, and the like, and their discourses were of a serious cast; but the province of making the spectators merry, descended from the Devil in the mystery, to Vice or Iniquity of the morality, who usually personified some bad quality incident to human nature, as Pride, or Lust, or any other evil propensity. Alluding to the mimicry of this motley character, Jonson, in Epig. 159, has these lines: "————But the old Vice Acts old Iniquity, and in the fit Of mimicry gets th' opinion of a wit." In the Staple of Newes, acted A.D. 1625, it is said, "Iniquity Why, I would have a fool in every act, Be 't comedy or tragedy: I've laugh'd Until I cr'yd again, to see what faces The rogue will make. Oh! it does me good To see him hold out's chin, hang down his hands, And twirle his bawble. There is nere a part About him but breaks jests. I heard a fellow Once on the stage, cry doodle doodle dooe Beyond compare; I'de give th' other shilling To see him act the Changling once again. To this another character replies, And so would I; his part has all the wit, For none speakes, carps, and quibbles besides him; I'd rather see him leap, or laugh, or cry, Than hear the gravest speech in all the play; I never saw Rheade peeping through the curtain, But ravishing joy entered into my heart. A boy then comes upon the stage, and the first speaker inquires for the Fool; but being told he is not to perform that night, he says— Well, since there will be nere a fool i' th' play, I'll have my money again; the comedy Will be as tedious to me as a sermon. VII.—SECULAR PLAYS.The plays mentioned in the preceding pages, and especially the miracles and mysteries, differed greatly from the secular plays and interludes which were acted by strolling companies, composed of minstrels, jugglers, tumblers, dancers, bourdours or jesters, and other performers properly qualified for the different parts of the entertainment, which admitted of a variety of exhibitions. These pastimes are of higher antiquity than the ecclesiastical plays; and they were much relished not only by the vulgar part of the people, but also by the nobility. The courts of the kings of England, and the castles of the great earls and barons, were crowded with the performers of the secular plays, where they were well received and handsomely rewarded; VIII.—INTERLUDES.The interludes, which, I presume, formed a material part of the performances exhibited by the secular players, were certainly of a jocular nature, consisting probably of facetious or satirical dialogues, calculated to promote mirth, and therefore they are censured by Matthew Paris IX.—DEFINITION OF TRAGEDIES IN CHAUCER'S TIME.Comedies were not known, nor tragedies according to the modern acceptation of the word in Chaucer's time; for what he calls tragedies, are simply tales of persons who have fallen from a state of prosperity, or worldly grandeur, to great adversity; as he himself tells us in the following lines: Tragedy is to tel a certayne story, As olde bokes maken memory, Of them that stode in great prosperite, And be fallen out of hye degre Into misery, and ended wretchedly. X.—PLAYS PERFORMED IN CHURCHES.The ecclesiastical plays, as we observed before, were usually performed in churches, or chapels, upon temporary scaffolds erected for that purpose; and sometimes, when a sufficient number of clerical actors were not to be procured, the churchwardens and chief parishioners caused the plays to be acted by the secular players, in order to collect money for the defraying of the church expenses; and in many instances they borrowed the theatrical apparel from other parishes when they had none of their own. The acting of plays in churches was much declaimed against by the religious writers of the sixteenth century; and Bonner, bishop of London, in 1542, the thirty-third year of the reign of Henry VIII., issued a proclamation to the clergy of his diocese, prohibiting all manner of common plays, games, or interludes, to be played, set forth, or declared, within their churches or chapels. XI.—CORNISH MIRACLE PLAYS.In Cornwall the miracle plays were differently represented: they were not performed in the churches, nor under any kind of cover, but in the open air, as we learn from Carew, whose words upon this subject are as follow: "The guary-miracle, in English, a miracle play, is a kind of interlude compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history, with that grossness which accompanied the Romanes vetus comedia. For representing it, they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the diameter of his enclined plain some forty or fifty feet. The country people flock from all sides many miles of, to hear and see it, for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well the eye as the eare. The players conne not their parts without booke, but are prompted by one called the ordinary, who followeth at their backs with the book in his hand, and telleth them what to say." XII.—CHARACTER OF THE OLD ITINERANT PLAYERS.The itinerant players often exhibited their performances upon temporary scaffolds as late as the reign of queen Elizabeth. A writer of that time, who is very severe against them, says, "They are called histriones, or rather histrices, which play, upon scaffolds and stages, enterludes and comedies;" he then launches out most furiously, calling them "jugglers, scoffers, jeasters, and players," and ranks them with the lowest and most vicious of mankind. XIII.—COURT PLAYS.There was another species of entertainment which differed materially from any of the pastimes mentioned in the preceding pages, I mean the ludi, or plays exhibited at court in the Christmas holidays: we trace them as far back as the reign of Edward III. The preparations made for them at that time are mentioned without the least indication of novelty, which admits of the supposition that they were still more ancient. From the numeration of the dresses appropriated in 1348 to one of these plays, which consisted of various kinds of disguisements, they seem to have merited rather the denomination of mummeries than of theatrical divertisements. The magnificent pageants and disguisings frequently exhibited The reader may form some judgment of the appearance the actors made upon these occasions, from the following: These, and the other figures in the subjoined engraving, are taken from a beautiful manuscript in the Bodleian Library, written and illuminated in the reign of Edward III. The performance seems to have consisted chiefly in dancing, and the mummers are usually attended by the minstrels playing upon different kinds of musical instruments. XIV.—PLAY IN HONOUR OF THE PRINCESS MARY.In the tenth year of the same king's reign, in honour of his sister the princess Mary's marriage with the king of France, XV.—PLAY OF HOCK-TUESDAY.Among the pastimes exhibited for the entertainment of queen Elizabeth during her stay at Kenelworth Castle, Warwickshire, was a kind of historical play, or old storial show, performed by certain persons who came for that purpose from Coventry. It was also called the old Coventry play of Hock-Tuesday, but must not be confounded with the Ludus de Corpus Christi, or Coventry Mystery, mentioned before, to which it did not bear the least analogy. The subject of the Hock-Tuesday show was the massacre of the Danes, a memorable event in the XVI.—DECLINE OF SECULAR PLAYS.The secular plays, as we have seen, consisted of a medley of different performances, calculated chiefly to promote mirth without any view to instruction; but soon after the production of regular plays, when proper theatres were established, the motley exhibitions of the strolling actors were only relished by the vulgar; the law set her face against them, the performers were stigmatised with the names of rogues and vagabonds, and all access was denied them at the houses of the opulent. They depended of course upon the precarious support derived from the favours of the lower classes of the people, which was not The Divell was wont to carry away the Evill, But now the Evill out-carries the Divell.—Act v. scene 6. The first appearance of a company of wooden actors excited, no doubt, the admiration of the populace, and the novelty of such an exhibition was probably productive of much advantage to the inventor. I cannot pretend to determine the time that puppet-plays were first exhibited in England. I rather think this species of entertainment originated upon the continent. Cervantes has made Don Quixote a spectator at a puppet-show, and the knight's behaviour upon this occasion is described with great humor. The puppets were originally called motions: we find them mentioned in Gammer Gurton's Needle, which is supposed to XVII.—ORIGIN OF PUPPET-PLAYS.Previous to the invention of puppets, or rather to the incorporating of them into companies, there were automatons that performed variety of motions. The famous rood, or crucifix, at Boxley in Kent, described by Lambarde, was a figure of this kind, which moved its eyes, and turned its head whenever the monkish miracle workers required its assistance. The jack of the clock-house, often mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth century, was also an automaton, that either struck the hours upon the bell in their proper rotation, or signified by its gestures that the clock was about to strike. In a humorous pamphlet called Lanthorn and Candle, or the Bellman's Second Walk, published at London, 1605, it is said, "The Jacke of the Clocke-house goes upon screws, and his office is to do nothing but strike;" and in an old play still more early, "He shakes his heade and throws his arms about like the Jacke of the Clocke-house." The name of Jack of the Clock-house was also given to a certain description of thieves. From these figures, I doubt not, originated the more modern heroes of the puppet-show. XVIII.—NATURE OF PERFORMANCES BY PUPPETS.The puppet-shows usually made their appearance at great fairs, and especially at those in the vicinity of the metropolis; they still XIX.—GIANTS AND OTHER PUPPET CHARACTERS.The subjects of the puppet-dramas were formerly taken from some well known and popular stories, with the introduction of knights and giants; hence the following speech in the Humorous Lovers, a comedy, printed in 1617: "They had like to have frighted me with a man dressed up like a gyant in a puppet-show." In my memory, these shows consisted of a wretched display of wooden figures, barbarously formed and decorated, without the least degree of taste or propriety; the wires that communicated the motion to them appeared at the tops XX.—PUPPET-PLAYS SUPPRESSED BY PANTOMIMES.The introduction, or rather the revival of pantomimes, which indeed have long disgraced the superior theatres, proved the utter undoing of the puppet-show men; in fact, all the absurdities of the puppet-show, except the discourses, are retained in the pantomimes, the difference consisting principally in the substitution of living puppets for wooden ones; but it must be confessed, though nothing be added to the rationality of the performances, great pains is taken to supply the defect, by fascinating the eyes and the ears; and certainly the brilliancy of the dresses and scenery, the skilful management of the machinery, and the excellence of the music, in the pantomimes, are great improvements upon the humble attempts of the vagrant motion-master. XXI.—THE MODERN PUPPET-SHOW MAN.In the present day, the puppet-show man travels about the streets when the weather will permit, and carries his motions, with the theatre itself, upon his back! The exhibition takes place in the open air; and the precarious income of the miserable itinerant depends entirely on the voluntary contributions of the spectators, which, as far as one may judge from the square appearance he usually makes, is very trifling. A few years back, XXII.—MOVING PICTURES.Another species of scenic exhibition with moving figures, bearing some distant analogy to the puppets, appeared at the commencement of the last century. Such a show is thus described in the reign of queen Anne, by the manager of a show exhibited at the great house in the Strand, over against the Globe Tavern, near Hungerford Market; the best places at one shilling, and the others at sixpence each: "To be seen, the greatest Piece of Curiosity that ever arrived in England, being made by a famous engineer from the camp before Lisle, who, with great labour and industry, has collected into a moving picture the following figures: first, it doth represent the confederate camp, and the army lying intrenched before the town; secondly, the convoys and the mules with prince Eugene's baggage; thirdly, the English forces commanded by the duke of Marlborough; likewise, several vessels, laden with provisions for the army, which are so artificially done as to seem to drive the water before them. The city and the citadel are very fine, with all its outworks, ravelins, hornworks, counter-scarps, half-moons, and palisados; the French horse marching out at one gate, and the confederate army marching in at the other; the prince's travelling coach with two generals in it, one saluting the company as it passes by; then a trumpeter sounds a call as he rides, at the noise whereof a sleeping centinel starts, and lifts up his head, but, not being espied, lies down to sleep again; besides abundance more admirable curiosities too tedious to be inserted here." He then modestly adds, "In short the whole piece is so contrived by art, that it seems to be life and nature." These figures, I presume, were flat painted images moving upon a flat surface, like those frequently seen upon the tops of clocks, where a carpenter's shop, or a stone-mason's yard, are by no means unusually represented. A juggler named Flockton, some few years back, had an exhibition of this kind, which he called a grand piece of clock-work. In this machine the combination of many different Pinkethman's Pantheon mentioned in the Spectator, was, I presume, an exhibition something similar to that above described, and probably the heathen deities were manufactured from pasteboard, and seated in rows one above the other upon clouds of the same material; at least I have seen them so fabricated, and so represented, about 1760, at a show in the country, which was contrived in such a manner, that the whole group descended and ascended with a slow motion to the sound of music. The Britons were passionately fond of vocal and instrumental music: for this reason, the bards, who exhibited in one person the musician and the poet, were held in the highest estimation among them. "These bards," says an early historian, "celebrated the noble actions of illustrious persons in heroic poems which they sang to the sweet sounds of the lyre;" II.—THE NORTHERN SCALDS.The scalds III.—THE ANGLO-SAXON GLEEMEN.Upon the establishment of the Saxons in Britain, these poetical musicians were their chief favourites; the courts of the kings, and the residences of the opulent afforded them a constant asylum; their persons were protected, and admission granted to them without the least restraint. In the Anglo-Saxon language they were distinguished by two appellations; the one equivalent to the modern term of gleemen or merry-makers, and the other harpers, derived from the harp, an instrument they usually played upon. Gli? or Gli?man; hence Gli??amen, glee-games, are properly explained in Somner's Lexicon, by merry tricks, jests, sports, and gambols, which were expressive of their new acquirements: Hea?pe?e, the appellation of harper, was long-retained by the English rhymists. The gleemen added mimicry, and other means of promoting mirth to their profession, as well as dancing and tumbling, with sleights of hand, and variety of deceptions to amuse the spectators; it was therefore necessary for them to associate themselves into companies, by which means they were enabled to diversify their performances, and render many of them more surprising through the assistance of their confederates. In Edgar's oration to Dunstan, the mimi, or minstrels, are said to sing and dance; and, in the Saxon canons made in that king's reign, A.D. 960, (Can. 58.) it is ordered that no priest shall be a poet, ?ceop, or exercise the mimical or histrionical art, in any degree, public or private. IV.—NATURE OF THE PERFORMANCES BY THE GLEEMEN.Representations of some of these pastimes are met with occasionally in the early Latin and Saxon manuscripts; and where they do occur, we uniformly find that the illuminators, being totally ignorant of ancient customs and the habits of foreign nations, have not paid the least regard to propriety in the depicting of either, but substituted those of their own time, and by this means they have, without design on their part, become the communicators of much valuable information. The following observations upon two very early paintings will, I doubt not, in great measure confirm the truth of this assertion. This engraving represents two persons dancing to the music of the horn and the trumpet, and it does not appear to be a common dance in which they are engaged; on the contrary, their attitudes are such as must have rendered it very difficult to perform. On the next page is a curious specimen of a performer's art. We here see a man throwing three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catching them one by one as they fall, but returning them again in a regular rotation. To give the greater appearance of difficulty to this feat, it is accompanied with the music of an instrument resembling the modern violin. It is necessary to add, that these two figures, as well as those dancing, previously exhibited, form a part only of two larger paintings, which, in their original state, are placed as frontispieces to the Psalms of David; and in both, the artists have represented that monarch seated upon his throne in the act of playing upon the harp or the lyre, and surrounded by the masters of sacred music. In each the king is depicted considerably larger than the other performers, a compliment usually paid to saints and dignified persons; which absurdity has been frequently practised by the more modern painters. The inferior figures form a sort of border to the sides and bottom of the royal portrait. In addition to the four figures upon the engraving, No. 49, and exclusive of the king, there are four more, all of them instrumental performers; one playing upon the horn, another I have been thus particular in describing these curious delineations, because I think they throw much light upon the profession of the Anglo-Saxon gleeman, and prove that his exhibitions were diversified at a very early period; for the reader, I doubt not, will readily agree with me, that dancing and sleights of hand were better calculated for secular pastimes, than for accompaniments to the solemn performances of sacred psalmody. The honest illuminators having no ideas, as I before observed, of foreign or ancient manners, saw not the absurdity of making the Jewish monarch a president over a company of Saxon gleemen; they had heard, no doubt, that these persons, whose names they found recorded in the book of Psalms, were poets and musicians; and therefore naturally concluded that they were gleemen, because they knew no others who performed in that double capacity but the gleemen: they knew also, that these facetious artists were greatly venerated by persons of the highest rank, and their company requested by kings and princes, who richly rewarded them for the exercise of their talents, and for this reason, conceived that they were proper companions for the royal psalmist. V.—A ROYAL PLAYER WITH THREE DARTS.The sleight of casting up a certain number of sharp instruments into the air, and catching them alternately in their fall, though part of the gleeman's profession, was not entirely confined to this practice. It is said of Olaf Fryggeson, one of the ancient kings of Norway, that he could play with three darts at once, tossing them in the air, and always kept two up while the third was down in his hand. VI.—BRAVERY OF A MINSTREL IN THE CONQUEROR'S ARMY.The celebrated minstrel Taillefer, who came into England with William the Norman, was a warrior as well as a musician. He was present at the battle of Hastings, and appeared at the head of the conqueror's army, singing the songs of Charlemagne and of Roland; but previous to the commencement of the action, he advanced on horseback towards the army of the English, and, casting his spear three times into the air, he caught it as often by the iron head; and the fourth time he threw it among his enemies, one of whom he wounded in the body: he then drew his sword, which he also tossed into the air as many times as he had done his spear, and caught it with such dexterity, that those who saw him attributed his manoeuvres to the power of enchantment. L'un dit al altre ki co veit, Ke co esteit enchantement. After he had performed these feats he galloped among the English soldiers, thereby giving the Normans the signal of battle; and in the action it appears he lost his life. VII.—OTHER PERFORMANCES BY GLEEMEN.One part of the gleeman's profession, as early as the tenth century, was, teaching animals to dance, to tumble, and to put themselves into variety of attitudes, at the command of their masters. This engraving is the copy of a curious though rude delineation, being little more than an outline, which exhibits a specimen of this pastime. The principal joculator appears in the front, holding a knotted switch in one hand, and a line attached to a bear in the other; the animal is lying down in obedience to his command; and behind them are two more figures, the one playing upon two flutes or flageolets, and elevating his left leg while he stands upon his right, supported by a staff that passes under his armpit; the other dancing, in an attitude exceedingly ludicrous. This performance takes place upon an eminence resembling a stage made with earth; and in the original a vast concourse are standing round it in a semicircle as spectators of the sport, but they are so exceedingly ill drawn, and withal so indistinct, that I did not think it worth the pains to copy them. The dancing, if I may so call it, of the flute player, is repeated twice in the same manuscript. I have thence selected two other figures. Here we see a youth playing upon a harp with only four strings, and apparently singing at the same time, while an elderly man is performing the part of a buffoon or posture master, holding up one of his legs, and hopping upon the other to the music. Both these drawings occur in a MS. psalter in the Harleian Collection, VIII.—THE HARP USED BY THE SAXONS.The bards and the scalds most assuredly used the harp to accompany their songs and modulate their voices. The Saxon gleemen and joculators followed their example, and are frequently called harpers for that reason; but, at the same time, it is equally certain, that they were well acquainted with several other instruments of music, as the violin, or something very similar to it; pipes or flutes of various kinds; horns and trumpets; to which may be added the tabor, or drum. The harp, indeed, was the most popular, and frequently exercised by persons who did not follow the profession of gleemen. We learn from Bede, an unquestionable authority, that, as early as the seventh century, it was customary at convivial meetings to hand a harp from one person to another, and every one who partook of the festivity played upon it in his turn, singing a song to the music for merriment sake. IX.—THE NORMAN MINSTRELS.Soon after the Conquest, these musicians lost the ancient Saxon appellation of gleemen, and were called ministraulx, in X.—TROUBADOURS.The Norman rhymers appear to have been the genuine descendants of the ancient Scandinavian scalds; they were well known in the northern part of France long before the appearance of the provincial poets called troubadours, and trouvers, that is, finders, probably from the fertility of their invention. The troubadours brought with them into the north a new species of language called the Roman language, which in the eleventh and XI.—JESTOURS.The conteurs and the jestours, who are also called dissours, and seggers, or sayers, and, in the Latin of that time, fabulatores, and naratores, were literally, in English, tale-tellers, who recited either their own compositions or those of others, consisting of popular tales and romances, for the entertainment of public companies, on occasions of joy and festivity. Gower, a writer contemporary with Chaucer, describing the coronation of a Roman emperor, says, When every ministrell had playde, And every dissour had sayde, Which was most pleasaunt in his ear. In a manuscript collection of Old Stories, in the Harleian Library, we read of a king who kept a tale-teller on purpose to lull him to sleep every night; but some untoward accident having prevented him from taking his repose so readily as usual, he desired the fabulator to tell him longer stories; who obeyed, and began one upon a more extensive scale, and fell asleep himself in the midst of it. XII.—TALES AND MANNERS OF THE JESTOURS.The jestours, or, as the word is often written in the old English dialect, gesters, were the relaters of the gestes, that is, the actions of famous persons, whether fabulous or real; and these stories were of two kinds, the one to excite pity, and the other to move laughter, as we learn from Chaucer: And jestours that tellen tales, Both of wepying and of game. The tales of game, as the poet expresses himself, were short jocular stories calculated to promote merriment, in which the reciters paid little respect to the claims of propriety, or even of common decency. The tales of game, however, were much more popular than those of weeping, and probably for the very reason that ought to have operated the most powerfully for their suppression. The gestours, whose powers were chiefly employed in the hours of conviviality, finding by experience that lessons of instruction were much less seasonable at such times, than idle tales productive of mirth and laughter, accommodated I can not parfitly my pater noster as the priest it singeth, But I can ryms of Roben Hode, and Randol erl of Chester But of our Lord or our Lady I lerne nothing at all: I am occupied every daye, holy daye, and other, With idle tales at the ale. He then blames the opulent for rewarding these "devils dissours," as he calls them, and adds, He is worse than Judas that giveth a japer silver. The japers, I apprehend, were the same as the bourdours, or rybauders, an inferior class of minstrels, and properly called jesters in the modern acceptation of the word; whose wit, like that of the merry-andrews of the present day, consisted in low obscenity, accompanied with ludicrous gesticulation. They sometimes, however, found admission into the houses of the opulent. Knighton indeed mentions one of these japers who was a favourite in the English court, and could obtain any grant from the king "a burdando," that is, by jesting. They are well described by the poet: As japers and janglers, Judas chyldren, Fayneth them fantasies, and fooles them maketh. It was a very common and a very favourite amusement, so late as the sixteenth century, to hear the recital of verses and moral speeches, learned for that purpose, by a set of men who obtained their livelihood thereby, and who, without ceremony, intruded themselves, not only into taverns and other places of public resort, but also into the houses of the nobility. XIII.—FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THEIR PRACTICES.The different talents of the minstrels are sarcastically described by an ancient French poet; XIV.—PATRONAGE, PRIVILEGES, AND EXCESSES OF THE MINSTRELS.There is great reason to conclude that the professors of music were more generally encouraged, and of course more numerous in this country, subsequent to the Norman conquest, than they had been under the government of the Saxons. We are told, that the courts of princes swarmed with poets and minstrels. The earls also and great barons, who in their castles emulated the pomp and state of royalty, had their poets and minstrels: they formed part of their household establishment; and, exclusive of their wages, were provided with board, lodging, and These minstrels, as well as those belonging to the court, were permitted to perform in the rich monasteries, and in the mansions of the nobility, which they frequently visited in large parties, and especially upon occasions of festivity. They entered the castles without the least ceremony, rarely waiting for any previous invitation, and there exhibited their performances for the entertainment of the lord of the mansion and his guests. They were, it seems, admitted without any difficulty, and handsomely rewarded for the exertion of their talents. It was no uncommon thing with the itinerant minstrels to find admission into the houses of the opulent. The Saxon and the Danish gleemen followed the armies in the time of war, and had access to both the camps without the least molestation. The popular story of king Alfred, recorded by William of Malmsbury and other writers, may be mentioned in proof of this assertion. He, it is said, assumed the character of a gleeman, sub specie mimi—ut joculatoriÆ professor artis, The extensive privileges enjoyed by the minstrels, and the long continuance of the public favour, inflated their pride and made them insolent; they even went so far as to claim their reward by a prescriptive right, and settled its amount according to the estimation they had formed of their own abilities, and the opulence of the noblemen into whose houses they thought proper to intrude. The large gratuities collected by these artists not only occasioned great numbers to join their fraternity, but also induced many idle and dissipated persons to assume the characters of minstrels, to the disgrace of the profession. These evils became at last so notorious, that in the reign of king Edward II. it was thought necessary to restrain Thus we read in the old romance of Launfel, They had menstrelles of moche honours, Fydelers, sytolyrs, and trompoters. The edict also prohibits a professed minstrel from going to the house of any person below the dignity of a baron, unless invited by the master; and, in that case, it commands him to be contented with meat and drink, and such reward as the housekeeper willingly offered, without presuming to ask for any thing. For the first offence the minstrel lost his minstrelsy, and for the second he was obliged to forswear his profession, and was never to appear again as a minstrel. XV.—A GUILD OF MINSTRELS.In little more than a century afterwards, the same grievances became again the subject of complaint; and in the ninth year of Edward IV. it was stated, that certain rude husbandmen and artificers of various trades had assumed the title and livery of the king's minstrels, and, under that colour and pretence, had collected money in divers parts of the kingdom, and committed other disorders; the king therefore granted to Walter Haliday, marshal, and to seven others, his own minstrels, named by him, a charter, by which he created, or rather restored, a fraternity, or perpetual guild, such as the king understood the brothers and sisters of the fraternity of minstrels to have possessed in former time; and we shall see, a little further on, that the minstrel's art, or part of it at least, was practised by females in the time of the Saxons. This fraternity was to be governed by XVI.—ABUSES AND DECLINE OF MINSTRELSY.It does not appear that much good was effected by the foregoing institution; it neither corrected the abuses practised by the fraternity, nor retrieved their reputation, which declined apace from this period. Under queen Elizabeth, the minstrels had lost the protection of the opulent; and their credit was sunk so low in the public estimation, that, by a statute in the thirty-ninth year of her reign against vagrants, they were included among the rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and subjected to the like punishments. This edict also affected all fencers, bearwards, common players of interludes (with the exception of such players as belonged to great personages, and were authorised to play under the hand and seal of their patrons), as well as minstrels wandering abroad, jugglers, tinkers, and pedlars; and seems to have given the death's wound to the profession of the minstrels, who had so long enjoyed the public favour, and basked in the sunshine of prosperity. The name, however, remained, and was applied to itinerant fiddlers and other musicians, whose miserable state is thus described by Putenham, in his Arte of English PoËsie, printed in 1589: Much better than a Paris-garden beare, Or prating puppet on a theatre, Or Mimoes whistling to his tabouret, Selling a laughter for a cold meales meat. It is necessary, however, to observe, that public and private bands of musicians were called minstrels for a considerable time after this period, and without the least indication of disgrace; but then the appellation seems to have been confined to the instrumental performers, and such of them as were placed upon a regular establishment: the musicians of the city of London, for instance, were called indifferently waits and minstrels. We hear of the itinerant musicians again in an ordinance from Oliver Cromwell, dated 1656, during his protectorship, which prohibits "all persons commonly called fidlers, or minstrells," from "playing, fidling, and making music, in any inn, alehouse, or tavern;" and also from "proffering themselves, or desireing, or intreating any one to hear them play, or make music in the places aforesaid." The only vestige of these musical vagrants now remaining, is to be found in the blind fiddlers wandering about the country, and the ballad singers, who frequently accompany their ditties with instrumental music, especially the fiddle, vulgarly called a crowd, and the guitar. And here we may observe, that the name of fiddlers was applied to the minstrels as early at least as the fourteenth century: it occurs in the Vision of Pierce the Ploughman, XVII.—MINSTRELS WERE SATIRISTS AND FLATTERERS.The British bards employed their musical talents in the praise of heroic virtue, or in the censure of vice, apparently without any great expectation of reward on the one hand, or fear of punishment on the other. The Scandinavian scalds celebrated XVIII.—ANECDOTES OF OFFENDING MINSTRELS.It is said of William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, chancellor and justiciary of England, who was also the Pope's legate, and a great favourite of Richard I., that he kept a number of poets in his pay, to make songs and poems in his praise; and also, that with great gifts he allured many of the best singers and minstrels from the continent, to sing those songs in the public streets of the principal cities in England. It was, on the other hand, a very dangerous employment to censure the characters of great personages, or hold their actions up to ridicule; for, though the satirist might be secure at the moment, he was uncertain that fortune would not one day or another put him into the power of his adversary, which was the case with Luke de Barra, a celebrated Norman minstrel; who, in his songs having made very free with the character of Henry I. of England, by some untoward accident fell into the hands of the irritated monarch. He condemned him to have his eyes pulled out: and, when the earl of Flanders, who was present, pleaded warmly in his favour, the king replied: "This man, being a wit, a poet, and a minstrel, composed many indecent songs against me, and sung them openly to the great entertainment of mine enemies; and, since it has pleased God to deliver him into my hands, I will punish him, to deter others from the like petulance." The cruel sentence was executed, and the miserable satirist died soon after with the wounds he had received in struggling with the executioner. Again, in the reign of king Edward II., at the solemnization of the feast of Pentecost in the great hall at Westminster, when that prince was seated at dinner in royal state, and attended by the peers of the realm, a woman habited like a minstrel, riding upon a great horse trapped in the minstrel fashion, entered the hall, and, going round the several tables, imitated the gestures of a mimic, XIX.—THE DRESS OF THE MINSTRELS.It is very clear, that the minstrels wore a peculiar kind of dress by which they might readily be distinguished: the woman above mentioned is expressly said to have been habited like a mimic or a minstrel, and by that means obtained admission without the least difficulty to the royal presence. I remember also a story recorded in a manuscript, written about the reign of Edward III., of a young man of family, who came to a feast, where many of the nobility were present, in a vesture called a coat bardy, cut short in the German fashion, and resembling the dress of a minstrel. The oddity of his habit attracted the notice of the company, and especially of an elderly knight, to whom he was well known, who thus addressed him: "Where, my friend, is your fiddle, your ribible, or such-like instrument belonging to a minstrel?" "Sir," replied the young man, "I have no crafte nor science in using such instruments." "Then," returned the knight, "you are much to blame; for, if you choose to debase yourself and your family by appearing in the garb of a minstrel, it is fitting you should be able to perform his duty." And again, in the history of John Newchombe, the famous clothier of Newbury, usually called Jack of Newbury, it is said, "They had not sitten long, but in comes a noise It appears that the minstrels sometimes shaved the crowns of their heads like the monks, and also assumed an ecclesiastical habit; this was probably an external garment only, and used when they travelled from place to place. The succeeding anecdote will prove that the ecclesiastics and the mimics were not always readily distinguished from each other: Two itinerant priests coming towards night to a cell of the Benedictines near Oxford, they there, upon the supposition of their being mimics, or minstrels, gained admittance; but the cellarer, the sacrist, and others of the brethren, disappointed in the expectation they had formed of being entertained with mirthful performances, and finding them to be nothing more than two indigent ecclesiastics, beat them, and turned them out of the monastery. XX.—THE KING OF THE MINSTRELS.The king's minstrel, frequently in Latin called joculator regis or the king's juggler, was an officer of rank in the courts of the Norman monarchs. He had the privilege of accompanying his master when he journeyed, and of being near his person; and probably was the regulator of the royal sports, and appointed the other minstrels belonging to the household; for which reason, I presume, he was also called the king, or chief of the minstrels. At what time this title was first conferred on him does not appear: we meet with it, however, in an account of the public expenditures made in the fifth year of Edward I.; at which time, the king of the minstrels, whose name was Robert, The title of royalty was not confined to the king's chief minstrel: it was also bestowed upon the regent of other companies of musicians, as we find in a charter granted by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, to the minstrels of Tutbury in Staffordshire. This document he addresses, under his seal, at the castle of Tutbury, August 24, in the fourth year of Richard II., to nostre bene ame le roy des ministraulx, his well beloved the king of the minstrels; and concedes to him full power and commission to oblige the minstrels belonging to the honour of Tutbury to perform their services and minstrelsies in the same manner that they had been accustomed to be done in ancient times. This battle was fought near to Titbury town, When the bagpipes baited the bull. I am king of the fidlers, and swear 'tis a truth, And I call him that doubts it a gull. Claude Fauchet, a French author of eminence, before quoted, speaking concerning the title of king, formerly given to many officers belonging to the court, makes these observations: "I am well assured, the word king signifies comptroller, or head, as the chief heralds are called kings at arms, because it belonged solely to them to regulate the ceremonies of the justs and tournaments." He then applies this reasoning to the Roy des Ribaulx, an officer in the ancient court of France; XXI.—REWARDS GIVEN TO MINSTRELS.In the middle ages, the courts of princes, and the residences of the opulent, were crowded with minstrels; and such large sums of money were expended for their maintenance, that the public treasuries were often drained. Matilda, queen to Henry I., is said to have lavished the greater part of her revenue upon poets and minstrels, and oppressed her tenants to procure more. The rewards given to the minstrels did not always consist in money, but frequently in rich mantles and embroidered vestments: they received, says Fauchet, great presents from the nobility, who would sometimes give them even the robes with which they were clothed. It was a common custom in the middle ages to give vestments of different kinds to the minstrels. In an ancient poem, cited by Fauchet, called La Robe Vermeille, or, The Red Robe, the wife of a vavaser, that is, one who, holding of a superior lord, has tenants under him, reproaches her husband for accepting a robe; "Such gifts," says she, "belong to jugglers, and other singing men, who receive garments from the nobility, because it is their trade: S'appartient À ces jorgleours, Et À ces autres chanteours, Quils ayent de ces chevaliers, Les robes car c'est lor mestier." These garments the jugglers failed not to take with them to other courts, in order to excite a similar liberality. Another artifice they often used, which was, to make the heroes of their poems exceedingly bountiful to the minstrels, who appear to have been introduced for that purpose: thus, in the metrical romance of Ipomedon, where the poet speaks of the knight's marriage, he says— Ipomydon gaff, in that stound, To mynstrelles five hundred pound. The author of Pierce the Ploughman, who lived in the reign of Edward III., gives the following general description of the different performances of the minstrels, and of their rewards, at that period: I am mynstrell, quoth that man; my name is Activa Vita; All Idle iche hate, A wafirer And few robes I get, or faire furred gownes. Nother mantill, nor money, amonges lords minstrels: And, for Fartin ne fislen, at feastes, ne harpen; Jape, ne juggle, ne gentilly pype, Ne neither saylen ne saute, I have no good giftes to please the great lordes. And, if we refer to history, we shall find that the poets are not incorrect in their statement. Gaston earl of Foix, whose munificence is much commended by Froissart, lived in a style of splendour little inferior to that of royalty. The historian, speaking of a grand entertainment given by this nobleman, which he had an opportunity of seeing, says, "Ther wer many mynstrells, as well of his own, as of straungers; and each of them dyd their devoyre, in their faculties. Respecting the pecuniary rewards of the minstrels, we have, among others, the following accounts. At the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of Edward I. to John earl of Holland, every king's minstrel received forty shillings. XXII.—PAYMENTS TO MINSTRELS.In the eighth year of Edward III., licence was granted to Barbor the Bagpiper, to visit the schools for minstrels in parts XXIII—WEALTH OF CERTAIN MINSTRELS.In the middle ages, the professors of minstrelsy had the opportunity of amassing much wealth; and certainly some of them were men of property. In Domesday Book, it appears that Berdic, the king's joculator, had lands in Gloucestershire; XXIV.—MINSTRELS SOMETIMES DANCING MASTERS.It has already been observed, that the name of minstrels was frequently applied to instrumental performers, who did not profess any other branch of the minstrelsy. In an old morality called Lusty Juventus, it is said, Who knoweth where is ere a minstrel? By the Masse, I would fayne go daunce a fit. This passage calls to my memory a circumstance recorded by Fauchet, which proves that the minstrels were sometimes dancing masters. "I remember," says he, "to have seen Martin Baraton, an aged minstrel of Orleans, who was accustomed to play upon the tambourine at weddings, and on other occasions of festivity. His instrument was silver, decorated with small plates of the same metal, The joculator, or the jugglour of the Normans, was frequently included under the collective appellation of minstrel. His profession originally was very comprehensive, and included the practice of all the arts attributed to the minstrel; and some of the jugglers were excellent tumblers. Joinville, in the Life of St. Louis and Charpentier, quotes an old author, who speaks of a joculator, qui sciebat tombare. II.—DIFFERENT DENOMINATIONS OF THE JOCULATOR, AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY DECEPTIONS.The name of tregetours was chiefly, if not entirely, appropriated to those artists who, by sleight of hand, with the assistance of machinery of various kinds, deceived the eyes of the spectators, and produced such illusions as were usually supposed to be the effect of enchantment; for which reason they were frequently ranked with magicians, sorcerers, and witches; and, indeed, the feats they performed, according to the descriptions given of them, abundantly prove that they were no contemptible practitioners in the arts of deception. Chaucer, who, no doubt, had frequently an opportunity of seeing the tricks exhibited by the tregetours in his time, says, "There There saw I Coll Tregetour, Upon a table of sycamour, Play an uncouthe thynge to tell; I sawe hym cary a wynde-mell Under a walnote shale. III.—THE JOCULATORS' PERFORMANCES ASCRIBED TO MAGIC.Chaucer attributes these illusions to the practice of natural magic. Thus the Squire, in his Tale, says, An appearance made by some magyke, As jogglours playen at their festes grete. And again, in the third book of the House of Fame, And clerkes eke which conne well All this magyke naturell. Meaning, I suppose, an artful combination of different powers of nature in a manner not generally understood; and therefore he makes the Devil say to the Sompner in the Friar's Tale, "I can take any shape that pleases me; of a man, of an ape, or of an angel; and it is no wonder, a lousy juggler can deceive you; and I can assure you my skill is superior to his." I need not say, that a greater latitude was assigned to what the poet calls natural magic in his days, than will be granted in the present time. IV.—ASIATIC JUGGLERS.Sir John Mandevile, who wrote about the same period as Chaucer, speaks thus of a similar exhibition performed before the Great Chan: "And then comen jogulours, and enchauntours, that doen many marvaylles;" for they make, says he, the appearance of the sun and the moon in the air; and then they make the night so dark, that nothing can be seen; and again they restore the day-light, with the sun shining brightly; then they "bringen-in daunces, of the fairest damsels of the world, and the richest arrayed," afterwards they make other damsels to come in, bringing cups of gold, full of the milk of divers animals, and give drink to the lords and ladies; and then "they make knyghts jousten in armes fulle lustily," who run together, and in the encounter break their spears so rudely, that the splinters fly all about the hall. V.—REMARKABLE STORY FROM FROISSART.The foregoing passages bring to my recollection a curious piece of history related by Froissart, which extends the practice of these deceptions far beyond the knowledge of the modern VI.—TRICKS OF THE JUGGLERS ASCRIBED TO INFERNAL AGENCY; BUT MORE REASONABLY ACCOUNTED FOR.Our learned monarch James I. was perfectly convinced that these, and other inferior feats exhibited by the tregetours, could only be performed by the agency of the Devil, "who," says he, "will learne them many juglarie tricks, at cardes and dice, to deceive men's senses thereby, and such innumerable false practiques, which are proved by over-many in this age." VII.—JOHN RYKELL, A CELEBRATED TREGETOUR.In the fourteenth century, the tregetours seem to have been in the zenith of their glory; from that period they gradually declined in the popular esteem; their performances were more confined, and of course became less consequential. Lidgate, in one of his poems, Maister John Rykell, sometime tregitour Of noble Henry kinge of Englonde, And of France the mighty conqueror; For all the sleightes, and turnyng of thyne bonde, Thou must come nere this dance, I understonde; Nought may avail all thy conclusions, For Dethe shortly, nother on see nor land, Is not desceyved by no illusions. To this summons the sorrowful juggler replies: What may availe mankynde naturale? Not any crafte schevid Or course of steres above celestial Or of heavens all the influence, Ageynst Deth to stonde at defence. Lygarde-de-mayne Farewell, my craft and all such sapience; For Deth hath mo masteries In "The Disobedient Child," an old morality, or interlude, written by Thomas Ingeland in the reign of queen Elizabeth, a servant, describing the sports at his master's wedding, says, What juggling was there upon the boardes! What thrusting of knyves through many a nose! What bearynge of formes! what holdinge of swordes! What puttynge of botkyns throughe legge and hose! These tricks approximate nearly to those of the modern jugglers, who have knives so constructed, that, when they are applied to the legs, the arms, and other parts of the human figure, they have the appearance of being thrust through them; the bearing of the forms, or seats, I suppose, was the balancing of them; and the holding of swords, the flourishing them about in the sword-dance; which the reader will find described in the succeeding chapter. VIII.—VARIOUS PERFORMANCES OF THE JOCULATORS.Originally, as we have before observed, the profession of the joculator included all the arts attributed to the minstrels; and accordingly his performance was called his minstrelsy in the reign of Edward II., and even after he had obtained the appellation of a tregetour. In a book of customs, says St. Foix, Comenius, I take it, has given us a proper view of the juggler's exhibition, as it was displayed a century and a half back, in a short chapter entitled PrestigiÆ, or Sleights. IX.—PRIVILEGES OF THE JOCULATORS AT PARIS—THE KING'S JOCULATOR.The joculator regis, or king's juggler, was anciently an officer of note in the royal household; and we find, from Domesday Book, that Berdic, who held that office in the reign of the Conqueror, was a man of property. X.—GREAT DISREPUTE OF MODERN JUGGLERS.The profession of the juggler, with that of the minstrel, had fallen so low in the public estimation at the close of the reign of queen Elizabeth, that the performers were ranked, by the moral writers of the time, not only with "ruffians, blasphemers, thieves, and vagabonds;" but also with "Heretics, Jews, Pagans, and sorcerers;" Jugglers and pipers, bourders and flatterers, Baudes and janglers, and cursed adouteres. In another passage, he speaks of a disguised juggler, and a vile jester or bourder; Dancing, tumbling, and balancing, with variety of other exercises requiring skill and agility, were originally included in the performances exhibited by the gleemen and the minstrels; and they remained attached to the profession of the joculator after he was separated from those who only retained the first branches of the minstrel's art, that is to say, poetry and music. II.—WOMEN DANCERS AND TUMBLERS.The joculators were sometimes excellent tumblers; yet, generally speaking, I believe that vaulting, tumbling, and balancing, were not executed by the chieftain of the gleeman's company, but by some of his confederates; and very often this part of the show was performed by females, who were called glee-maidens, Ma?en-?l??ien?, by the Saxons; and tumbling women, tomblesteres, and tombesteres, in Chaucer, derived from the Saxon word ?omban, to dance, vault, or tumble. The same poet, in the Romance of the Rose, calls them saylours, or dancers, from the Latin word salio. They are also denominated sauters, from saut in French, to leap. Hence, in Pierce Ploughman, one says, "I can neither saylen ne saute." They are likewise in modern language called balancing women, or tymbesteres, players upon the tymbrel, which they also balanced III.—DANCING CONNECTED WITH TUMBLING.Dancing, in former times, was closely connected with those feats of activity now called vaulting and tumbling; and such exertions often formed part of the dances that were publicly exhibited by the gleemen and the minstrels; for which reason, the Anglo-Saxon writers frequently used the terms of leaping and tumbling for dancing. Both the phrases occur in the Saxon versions of St. Mark's Gospel; where it is said of the daughter of Herodias, that she vaulted or tumbled, instead of danced, before king Herod. Herodias is so drawn in a book of Prayers in the Royal Library. Her servant stands by her side. The drawing occurs in a series of Scripture histories in the Harleian Collection, IV.—ANTIQUITY OF TUMBLING.The exhibition of dancing, connected with leaping and tumbling, for the entertainment of princes and noblemen on occasions of festivity, is of high antiquity. Homer mentions two dancing tumblers, who stood upon their heads, V.—VARIOUS DANCES.Among the pastimes exhibited for the amusement of queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth castle, there were shown, as Laneham says, before her highness, surprising feats of agility, by an Italian, "in goings, turnings, tumblings, castings, hops, jumps, leaps, skips, springs, gambauds, somersaults, caprettings, and flights, forward, backward, sideways, downward, upward, and with sundry windings, gyrings, and circumflections," which he performed with so much ease and lightness, that words are not adequate to the description; "insomuch that I," says Laneham, "began to doubt whether he was a man or a spirit;" and afterwards, "As for this fellow, I cannot tell what to make of him; save that I may guess his back to be metalled like a lamprey, that has no bone, but a line like a lute-string." Three ancient specimens of the tumbler's art are subjoined. This engraving represents a woman bending herself backwards, from a MS. of the thirteenth century, in the Cotton Library. In this second representation a man is performing the same feat, but in a more extraordinary manner. The original is contained in a MS. in the library of sir Hans Sloane. This representation of a girl turning over upon her hands, is from a MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. VI.—THE GLEEMEN'S DANCES.It is not by any means my intention to insinuate, from what has been said in the foregoing pages, that there were no dances performed by the Saxon gleemen and their assistants, but such as consisted of vaulting and tumbling: on the contrary, I trust it may be proved, that their dances were varied and accommodated to the taste of those for whom the performance was appropriated; being calculated, as occasion required, to excite the admiration and procure the applause of the wealthy or the vulgar. VII.—EXEMPLIFICATION OF GLEEMEN'S DANCES.We have already noticed a dance, represented by the engraving No. 50, from a painting of the tenth century, the most ancient of the kind that I have met with. Here, also, we find a young man dancing singly to the music of two flutes and a lyre; and the action attempted to be expressed by the artist is rather that of ease and elegancy of motion, than of leaping, or contorting of the body in a violent manner. It is evident that this delineation, which is from a Latin and Saxon MS. of the ninth century, in the Cotton Library, This dance is executed by a female; and probably the perfection of the dance consisted in approaching and receding from the bear with great agility, so as to prevent his seizing upon her, and occasioning any interruption to the performance, which the animal, on the other hand, appears to be exceedingly desirous of effecting, being unmuzzled for the purpose, and irritated by the scourge of the juggler. VIII.—THE SWORD-DANCE.There is a dance which was probably in great repute among the Anglo-Saxons, because it was derived from their ancestors the ancient Germans; it is called the sword-dance; and the performance is thus described by Tacitus: I have not been fortunate enough to meet with any delineation that accords with the foregoing descriptions of the sword-dance; but in a Latin manuscript of Prudentius with Saxon notes, written in the ninth century, and now in the Cotton Library, Early in the last century, and, I doubt not, long before that period, a species of sword-dance, usually performed by young women, constituted a part of the juggler's exhibition at Bartholomew fair. I have before me two bills of the shows there presented some time in the reign of queen Anne. The one speaks of "dancing with several naked swords, performed by a child of eight years of age;" which, the showman assures us, had given "satisfaction to all persons." The other, put forth, it seems, by one who belonged to Sadler's Wells, promises the company, that they shall see "a young woman dance with the swords, and upon a ladder, surpassing all her sex." Both these bills were printed in the reign of queen Anne; the first belonged to a showman named Crawley; IX.—THE ROPE-DANCE.This species of amusement is certainly very ancient. Terence, in the prologue to Hecyra, complains that the attention of the public was drawn from his play, by the exhibitions of a rope-dancer: Ita populus studio stupidus in funambulo Animum occupÂrat. When Isabel of Bavaria, queen to Charles VI. of France, made her public entry into Paris, among other extraordinary exhibitions prepared for her reception was the following, recorded by Froissart, who was himself a witness to the fact: "There was a mayster X.—ROPE-DANCING FROM THE BATTLEMENTS OF ST. PAUL'S.A performance much resembling the foregoing was exhibited before king Edward VI. at the time he passed in procession through the city of London, on Friday, the nineteenth of February, 1546, previous to his coronation. "When the king," says the author, "was advanced almost to St. George's church, XI.—ROPE-DANCING FROM ST. PAUL'S STEEPLE.This trick was repeated, though probably by another performer, in the reign of queen Mary; for, according to Holinshed, among the various shows prepared for the reception of Philip king of Spain, was one of a man who "came downe upon a rope, tied to the battlement of Saint Paule's church, with his XII.—ROPE-DANCING FROM ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, HERTFORD.A similar exploit was put in practice, about fifty years back, XIII.—A DUTCHMAN'S FEATS ON ST. PAUL'S WEATHERCOCK.To the foregoing extraordinary exhibitions we may add another equally dangerous, but executed without the assistance of a rope. It was performed in the presence of queen Mary in her passage through London to Westminster, the day before her coronation, in 1553, and is thus described by Holinshed: XIV.—JACOB HALL THE ROPE-DANCER.In the reign of Charles II. there was a famous rope-dancer named Jacob Hall, whose portrait is still in existence. XV.—MODERN CELEBRATED ROPE-DANCING.Soon after the accession of James II. to the throne, a Dutch woman made her appearance in this country; and "when," says a modern author, "she first danced and vaulted upon the rope in London, the spectators beheld her with a pleasure mixed with pain, as she seemed every moment in danger of breaking her neck." This woman was afterwards exceeded by Signora Violante, who not only exhibited many feats which required more strength and agility of body than she was mistress of, but had also a stronger head, as she performed at a much greater distance from the ground than any of her predecessors. Signor Violante was no less excellent as a rope-dancer. The spectators were astonished, in the reign of George II., at seeing the famous Turk dance upon the rope, balance himself on a slack wire without a poise, and toss up oranges alternately with his hands: but this admiration was considerably abated when one of the oranges happened to fall, and appeared by the sound to be a XVI.—ROPE-DANCING AT SADLER'S WELLS, &c.During the last century, Sadler's Wells was a famous nursery for tumblers, balance-masters, and dancers upon the rope and upon the wire. These exhibitions have of late years lost much of their popularity: the tight-rope dancing, indeed, is still continued there I shall only observe, that the earliest representation of rope-dancing which I have met with occurs in a little print affixed to one of the chapters of the vocabulary of Commenius, translated by Hoole; XVII.—FOOL'S DANCE.The fool's dance, or a dance performed by persons equipped in the dresses appropriated to the fools, is very ancient, and In this representation of the dance, it seems conducted with some degree of regularity; and is assisted by the music of the regals and the bagpipes. XVIII.—MORRIS-DANCE.The morris-dance was sometimes performed by itself, but was much more frequently joined to processions and pageants, and especially to those appropriated for the celebration of the May-games. On these occasions, the Hobby-horse, or a Dragon, with Robin Hood, the maid Marian, and other characters, supposed to have been the companions of that famous outlaw, made a part of the dance. In latter times, the morris was frequently introduced upon the stage. Stephen Gosson, who wrote about 1579, in a little tract entitled Playes Confuted, speaks of "dauncing of gigges, galiardes, and morisces, with hobbi-horses," as stage performances. The garments of the morris-dancers, as we observed before, were adorned with bells, which were not placed there merely for the sake of ornament, but were to be sounded as they danced. These bells were of unequal sizes, and differently I do not find that the morris-dancers were confined to any particular number: in the ancient representation of this dance given by the engraving No. 61, there are five, exclusive of the two musicians. A modern writer speaks of a set of morris-dancers who went about the country, consisting of ten men who danced, besides the maid Marian, and one who played upon the pipe and tabor. The hobby-horse, which seems latterly to have been almost inseparable from the morris-dance, was a compound figure; the resemblance of the head and tail of a horse, with a light wooden frame for the body, was attached to the person who was to perform the double character, covered with trappings reaching to the ground, so as to conceal the feet of the actor, and prevent its being seen that the supposed horse had none. Thus equipped, he was to prance about, imitating the curvetings and motions of a horse, as we may gather from the following speech in an old tragedy called the Vow-breaker, or Fair Maid of Clifton, by William Sampson, 1636. "Have I not practised my reines, my carreeres, my prankers, my ambles, my false trotts, my smooth ambles, and Canterbury paces—and shall the mayor put me, besides, the hobby-horse? I have borrowed the fore-horse bells, his plumes, and braveries; nay, I have had the mane new shorn and frizelled.—Am I not going to buy ribbons and toys of sweet Ursula for the Marian—and shall I not play the hobby-horse? Provide thou the dragon, and let me alone for the hobby-horse." And afterwards: "Alas, Sir! I come only to borrow a few ribbandes, bracelets, ear-rings, wyertyers, and silk girdles, and handkerchers, for a morris and a show before the queen—I come to furnish the hobby-horse." XIX.—THE EGG-DANCE.I am not able to ascertain the antiquity of this dance. The indication of such a performance occurs in an old comedy, entitled The longer thou livest, the more Foole thou art, by William Wager, Upon my one foote pretely I can hoppe, And daunce it trimley about an egge. Dancing upon one foot was exhibited by the Saxon gleemen, and probably by the Norman minstrels, but more especially by the women-dancers, who might thence acquire the name of hoppesteres, which is given by Chaucer. A vestige of this denomination is still retained, and applied to dancing, though somewhat contemptuously; for an inferior dancing-meeting is generally called a hop. A representation of the dance on one foot, taken from a manuscript of the tenth century, appears by the engraving No. 52, Hopping matches for prizes were occasionally made in the sixteenth century, as we learn from John Heywoode the epigrammatist. In his Proverbs, printed in 1566, are the following lines: Where wooers hoppe in and out, long time may bring Him that hoppeth best at last to have the ring— —I hoppyng without for a ringe of a rushe. And again, in the Four P's, a play by the same author, one of the characters is directed "to hop upon one foot;" and another says, Here were a hopper to hop for the ring. Hence it appears a ring was usually the prize, and given to him who could hop best, and continue to do so the longest. But to return to the egg-dance. This performance was common enough about thirty years back, XX.—THE LADDER-DANCE.So called, because the performer stands upon a ladder, which he shifts from place to place, and ascends or descends without losing the equilibrium, or permitting it to fall. This dance was practised at Sadler's Wells at the commencement of the last century, and revived about thirty years back. It is still continued there XXI.—JOCULAR DANCES.In the Roman de la Rose, we read of a dance, the name of which is not recorded, performed by two young women lightly clothed. The original reads, "Qui estoient en pure cottes, et tresses a menu tresse;" which Chaucer renders, "In kyrtels, and none other wede, and fayre ytressed every tresse." The French intimates that their hair was platted, or braided in small braids. The thin clothing, I suppose, was used then, as it is now upon like occasions, to show their persons to greater advantage. In their dancing they displayed a variety of singular attitudes; the one coming as it were privately to the other, and, when they were near together, in a playsome manner they turned their faces about, so that they seemed continually to kiss each other ————They threw yfere Ther mouthes, so that, through ther play, It semed as they kyste alway.—Chaucer's translation. A dance, the merit of which, if I mistake not, consisted in the agility and adroitness of the performer, has been noticed already, and is represented by the engraving No. 51; Many of the ancient dances were of a jocular kind, and sometimes executed by one person: we have, for instance, an account of a man who danced upon a table before king Edward II. The particulars of the dance are not specified; but it is said, that his majesty laughed very heartily at the performance: "Et lui fist tres grandement rire." Here we perceive a girl dancing upon the shoulders of the joculator, who at the same time is playing upon the bagpipes, and appears to be in the action of walking forwards. XXII.—WIRE-DANCING.Wire-dancing, at least so much of it as I have seen exhibited, appears to me to be misnamed: it consists rather of various feats of balancing, the actor sitting, standing, lying, or walking, upon the wire, which at the same time is usually swung backwards and forwards; and this, I am told, is a mere trick, to give the greater air of difficulty to the performance. Instead of dancing, I would call it balancing upon the wire. XXIII.—BALLETTE-DANCES.The grand figure-dances, and ballettes of action, as they are called, of the modern times, most probably surpass in splendour the ancient exhibitions of dancing. They first appeared, I believe, at the Opera-house; but have since been adopted by the two royal theatres, and imitated with less splendour upon the XXIV.-LEAPING AND VAULTING.There are certain feats of tumbling and vaulting that have no connexion with dancing, such as leaping and turning with the heels over the head in the air, termed the somersault, corruptly called a somerset. Mrs. Piozzi, speaking of Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, and favourite of James I., says, "and the sommerset, still used by tumblers, taken from him." Two boys are depicted holding the hoop, and the third preparing to leap through it, having deposited his cloak upon the ground to receive him. William Stokes, a vaulting master of the seventeenth century, boasted, in a publication called The Vaulting Master, &c. printed at Oxford in 1652, that he had reduced "vaulting to a method." In his book are several plates containing different specimens of his practice, which consisted chiefly in leaping over one or more horses, or upon them, sometimes seating himself in the saddle and sometimes standing upon the same. All these feats are now A show-bill for Bartholomew Fair, during the reign of queen Anne XXV.—BALANCING.Under this head perhaps may be included several of the performances mentioned in the preceding pages, and especially the throwing of three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catching them as they fall, as represented by the engraving No 50, from a MS. of the eighth century. This trick, in my memory, commonly constituted a part of the puppet-showman's exhibition; but I do not recollect to have seen it extended beyond four articles; for instance, two oranges and two forks; and the performer, by way of conclusion, caught the oranges upon the forks. In the Romance of the Rose, we read of tymbesteres, or balance-mistresses, who, according to the description there given, played upon the tymbres, or timbrels, and occasionally tossing them into the air, caught them again upon one finger. The passage translated by Chaucer, stands thus: There was manye a tymbestere— —Couthe her crafte full parfytly: The tymbres up full subtelly They cast, and hent full ofte Upon a fynger fayre and softe, That they fayled never mo. Towards the close of last summer (1799) I saw three itinerant musicians parading the streets of London; one of them turned the winch of an organ which he carried at his back, another XXVI.—REMARKABLE FEATS OF BALANCING.Subjoined are a few specimens of the ancient balance-master's art. This engraving, from a MS. in the Bodleian Library, The man in this engraving, from a drawing in a MS. book of prayers possessed by Francis Douce, esq., is performing a very I have seen carried into execution, and especially that of balancing a wheel. This was exhibited about the year 1799, at Sadler's Wells, by a Dutchman, who not only supported a wheel upon his shoulder, but also upon his forehead and his chin: and he afterwards extended the performance to two wheels tied together, with a boy standing upon one of them. The latter engravings are from the MS. in the Bodleian Library just referred to. The following is from a MS. Psalter formerly belonging to J. Ives, esq. of Yarmouth. In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was a very celebrated balance-master, named Mattocks, who made his appearance also at the Wells; among other tricks, he used to balance a straw with great adroitness, sometimes on one hand, sometimes on the other; and sometimes he would kick it with his foot to a considerable height, and catch it upon his nose, his chin, or his forehead. His fame was celebrated by a song set to music, entitled Balance a Straw, which became exceedingly popular. The Dutchman mentioned above performed the same sort of feat with a small peacock's feather, which he blew into the air, and caught it as it fell on different parts of his face in a very surprising manner. XXVII.—THE POSTURE-MASTER.The display of his abilities consisted in twisting and contorting his body into strange and unnatural attitudes. This art was, in The performer bends himself backwards, with his head turned up between his hands, so as nearly to touch his feet; and in this situation he hangs by his hams upon a pole, supported by two of his confederates. The posture-master is frequently mentioned by the writers of the two last centuries; but his tricks are not particularised. The most extraordinary artist of this kind that ever existed, it is said was Joseph Clark, who, "though a well-made man, and rather gross than thin, exhibited in the most natural manner almost every species of deformity and dislocation; he could dislocate his vertebrÆ so as to render himself a shocking spectacle; he could also assume all the uncouth faces that he had seen at a Quaker's meeting, at the theatre, or any other public place." To this man a paper in the Guardian evidently alludes, wherein it is said: "I remember a very whimsical fellow, commonly known by the name of the posture-master, in Charles the Second's reign, who was the plague of all the tailors about town. He would send for one of them to take measure of him; but would so contrive it as to have a most immoderate rising in one of his shoulders; when his clothes were brought home and tried upon him, the deformity was removed into the other shoulder; upon which the taylor begged pardon for the mistake, and mended it as fast as he could; but, on another trial, found him as straight-shouldered a man as one would desire to see, but a little unfortunate in a hump back. In short, this wandering tumour puzzled all the workmen about town, who found it impossible XXVIII.—THE MOUNTEBANK.I may here mention a stage-performer whose show is usually enlivened with mimicry, music, and tumbling; I mean the mountebank. It is uncertain at what period this vagrant dealer in physic made his appearance in England: it is clear, however, that he figured away with much success in this country during the two last centuries; he called to his assistance some of the performances practised by the jugglers; and the bourdour, or merry-andrew, seems to have been his inseparable companion: hence it is said in an old ballad, entitled Sundry Trades and Callings, A mountebank without his fool Is in a sorrowful case. The mountebanks usually preface the vending of their medicines with pompous orations, in which they pay as little regard to truth as to propriety. Shakspeare speaks of these wandering empirics in very disrespectful terms: As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, And many such like libertines of sin. In the reign of James II. "Hans Buling, a Dutchman, was well known in London as a mountebank. He was," says Granger, XXIX.—THE TINKER.Another itinerant, who seems in some degree to have rivalled the lower classes of the jugglers, was the tinker; and accordingly he is included, with them and the minstrels, in the act against vagrants established by the authority of queen Elizabeth. XXX.—THE FIRE-EATER.The first article in the foregoing quotation brings to my recollection the extraordinary performances of a professed fire-eater, whose name was Powel, well known in different parts of the One great part of the joculator's profession was the teaching of bears, apes, horses, dogs, and other animals, to imitate the actions of men, to tumble, to dance, and to perform a variety of tricks, contrary to their nature; and sometimes he learned himself to counterfeit the gestures and articulations of the brutes. The engravings which accompany this chapter relate to both these modes of diverting the public, and prove the invention of them to be more ancient than is generally supposed. The tutored bear lying down at the command of his master, represented by the engraving No. 51, The next represents This and the following are from a book of prayers in the Harleian Collection, I shall only observe, that there is but one among these six drawings in which the animal is depicted with a muzzle to prevent him from biting. The dancing bears have retained their place to the present time, and they frequently perform in the public streets for the amusement of the multitude; but the miserable appearance of their masters plainly indicates the scantiness of the contributions they receive on these occasions. II.—TRICKS PERFORMED BY APES AND MONKEYS.Thomas Cartwright, in his Admonition to Parliament against the Use of the Common Prayer, published in 1572, says, "If there be a bear or a bull to be baited in the afternoon, or a jackanapes to ride on horseback, the minister hurries the service over in a shameful manner, in order to be present at the show." We are not, however, hereby to conceive, that these amusements were more sought after or encouraged in England than they were abroad. "Our kings," says St. Foix, in his History of Paris, "at their coronations, their marriages, and at the baptism of their children, or at the creation of noblemen and knights, kept open court; and the palace was crowded on such occasions with cheats, buffoons, rope-dancers, tale-tellers, jugglers, and pantomimical performers. They call those," says he, "jugglers, who play upon the vielle, and teach apes, bears," and perhaps we may add, dogs, "to dance." Apes and monkeys seem always to have been favourite actors in the joculator's troop of animals. A specimen of the performance of a monkey, as far back as the fourteenth century, is represented by the last engraving; and the following is from another of the same date, already referred to, in the Bodleian Library. Leaping or tumbling over a chain or cord held by the juggler, as we here see it depicted, was a trick well received at Bartholomew fair in the time of Ben Jonson; and in the induction, or prologue, to a comedy written by him, which bears that title, in 1614, it is said, "He," meaning the author, "has ne're a sword and buckler man in his fayre; nor a juggler with a well educated ape to come over the chaine for the king of England, and back again for the prince, and sit still on his haunches for the pope and the king of Spaine." In recent times, and probably in more ancient times also, these facetious mimics of mankind were taught to dance upon the rope, and to perform the part of the balance-masters. In the reign of queen Anne, there was exhibited at Charing Cross, "a wild hairy man," who, we are told, danced upon the tight rope "with a balance, true to the music;" he also "walked upon the slack rope" while it was swinging, and drank a glass of ale; he "pulled off his hat, and paid his respects to the company;" and "smoaked tobacco," according to the bill, "as well as any Christian." III.—TRICKS PERFORMED BY HORSES AMONG THE SYBARITES.The people of Sybaris, a city in Calabria, are proverbial on account of their effeminacy; and it is said that they taught their horses to dance to the music of the pipe; for which reason, their enemies the Crotonians, at a time when they were at war with them, brought a great number of pipers into the field, and at the commencement of the battle, they played upon their pipes; the Sybarian horses, hearing the sound of the music, began to dance; and their riders, unable to manage them as they ought to have done, were thrown into confusion, and defeated with prodigious slaughter. This circumstance is mentioned by Aristotle; and, if not strictly true, proves, at least that the teaching of animals to exceed the bounds of action prescribed by nature was not unknown to the ancients. IV.—TRICKS PERFORMED BY HORSES IN THE XIII. CENTURY.We are told that, in the thirteenth century, a horse was exhibited by the joculators, which danced upon a rope; and oxen were rendered so docile as to ride upon horses, holding trumpets to their mouths as though they were sounding them. Another manuscript, more ancient by at least half a century, in the same collection, represents In the often cited Bodleian MS. Here the horse is rearing up and attacking the joculator, who opposes him with a small shield and a cudgel. These mock combats, to which the animals were properly trained, were constantly regulated by some kind of musical instrument. The two following performances, also delineated from the last mentioned manuscript, are more astonishing than those preceding them. In this instance, the horse is standing upon his hinder feet, and beating with his fore feet upon a kind of tabor or drum held by his master. In the following is the same The animal is exhibiting a similar trick with his hinder feet, and supports himself upon his fore feet. The original drawings, represented by these engravings, are all of them upwards of four hundred and fifty years old; and at the time in which they were made the joculators were in full possession of the public favour. Here it is deemed worthy to note, that in the year 1612, at a grand court festival, Mons. Pluvinel, riding-master to Louis XIII. of France, with three other gentlemen, accompanied by six esquires bearing their devices, executed a grand ballette-dance upon managed horses. V.—TRICKS BY HORSES IN QUEEN ANNE'S REIGN.Horses are animals exceedingly susceptible of instruction, and their performances have been extended so far as to bear the appearance of rational discernment. In the Harleian Library VI.—ORIGIN OF HORSE EXHIBITIONS AT ASTLEY'S, THE CIRCUS, &c.Riding upon two or three horses at once, with leaping, dancing, and performing various other exertions of agility upon their VII.—DANCING DOGS.I know no reason why the joculators should not have made the dog one of their principal brute performers: the sagacity of this creature and its docility could not have escaped their notice; and yet the only trick performed by the dog, that occurs in the ancient paintings, is simply that of sitting upon his haunches in an upright position, which he might have been taught to do with very little trouble, as in the following engraving from the Bodleian MS. finished in 1344, and in others that will presently appear. Neither do I recollect that dogs are included in the list of animals formerly belonging to the juggler's exhibitions, though, no doubt, they ought to have been; for, in Ben Jonson's play of Bartholmew Fayre, first acted in 1614, there is mention made of "dogges that dance the morrice," without any indication of the performance being a novelty. Dancing dogs, in the present day, make their appearance in the public streets of the metropolis; but their masters meet with very little encouragement, except from the lower classes of the people, and from children; and of course the performance is rarely worthy of notice. At the commencement of the last century, a company of dancing dogs was introduced at Southwark fair by a puppet-showman named Crawley. He called this exhibition "The Ball of Little Dogs;" and states in his bill, that they came from Lovain: he then tells us, that "they performed by their cunning tricks wonders in the world of dancing;" and adds, "you shall see one of them, named marquis of Gaillerdain, whose dexterity is not to be compared; VIII.—THE HARE AND TABOR, AND LEARNED PIG.It is astonishing what may be effected by constant exertion and continually tormenting even the most timid and untractable animals; for no one would readily believe that a hare could have been sufficiently emboldened to face a large concourse of spectators without expressing its alarm, and beat upon a tambourine in their presence; yet such a performance was put in practice not many years back, and exhibited at Sadler's Wells; and, if And here I cannot help mentioning a very ridiculous show of a learned pig, which of late days attracted much of the public notice, and at the polite end of the town. This pig, which indeed was a large unwieldy hog, being taught to pick up letters written upon pieces of cards, and to arrange them at command, gave great satisfaction to all who saw him, and filled his tormenter's pocket with money. One would not have thought that a hog had been an animal capable of learning: the fact, however, is another proof of what may be accomplished by assiduity; for the showman assured a friend of mine, that he had lost three very promising brutes in the course of training, and that the phenomenon then exhibited had often given him reason to despair of success. IX.—A DANCING COCK AND THE DESERTER BIRD.The joculators did not confine themselves to the tutoring of quadrupeds, but extended their practice to birds also; and a curious specimen of their art appears by the following engraving, from a drawing on the same MS. in the Harleian Collection whence No. 81 was taken. In the present day, this may probably be considered as a mere effort of the illuminator's fancy, and admit of a doubt whether such a trick was ever displayed in reality: but many are yet living who were witnesses to an exhibition far more surprising, shown at Breslaw's, a celebrated juggler, who performed at London X.—IMITATIONS OF ANIMALS.Among the performances dependent on imitation, that of assuming the forms of different animals, and counterfeiting their gestures, do not seem to have originated with the jugglers; for this absurd practice, if I mistake not, existed long before these comical artists made their appearance, at least in large companies, and in a professional way. There was a sport common among the ancients, which usually took place on the kalends of January, and probably formed a part of the Saturnalia, or feasts of Saturn. It consisted in mummings and disguisements; for the actors took upon themselves the resemblance of wild beasts, or domestic cattle, and wandered about from one place to another; and he, I presume, stood highest in the estimation of his fellows who best supported the character of the brute he imitated. This whimsical amusement was exceedingly popular, and continued to be practised long after the establishment of Christianity; it was, however, much opposed by the clergy, and particularly by Paulinus bishop of Nola, in the ninth century, who in one of his sermons tells us, that those concerned in it were wont to clothe themselves with skins of cattle, and put upon them the heads of beasts. XI.—MUMMINGS AND MASQUERADES.In the middle ages, mummings were very common. Mumm is said to be derived from the Danish word mumme, or momme in Dutch, and signifies to disguise oneself with a mask: hence a mummer; which is properly defined by Dr. Johnson to be a masker, one who performs frolics in a personated dress. The following verse occurs in Milton's Samson Agonistes, line 1325: Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics. At court, as well as in the mansions of the nobility, on occasions of festivity, it frequently happened that the whole company appeared in borrowed characters; and, full licence of speech being granted to every one, the discourses were not always kept within the bounds of decency. The mummeries practised by the lower classes of the people usually took place at the Christmas holidays; and such persons as could not procure masks rubbed their faces over with soot, or painted them; hence Sebastian Brant, in his Ship of Fools, The one hath a visor ugley set on his face, Another hath on a vile counterfaite vesture, Or painteth his visage with fume in such case, That what he is, himself is scantily sure. It appears that many abuses were committed under the sanction of these disguisements; and for this reason an ordinance was established, by which a man was liable to punishment who appeared in the streets of London with "a painted visage." Bourne, in his Vulgar Antiquities, XII.—MUMMING TO ROYAL PERSONAGES.Persons capable of well-supporting assumed characters were frequently introduced at public entertainments, and also in the pageants exhibited on occasions of solemnity; sometimes they were the bearers of presents, and sometimes the speakers of panegyrical orations. Froissart tells us, that, after the coronation of Isabel of Bavaria, the queen of Charles VI. of France, she had several rich donations brought to her by mummers in different disguisements; one resembling a bear, another an unicorn, others like a company of Moors, and others as Turks or Saracens. When queen Elizabeth was entertained at Kenilworth castle, various spectacles were contrived for her amusement, and some of them produced without any previous notice, to take her as it were by surprise. It happened about nine o'clock one evening, as her majesty returned from hunting, and was riding by torch-light, there came suddenly out of the wood, by the road-side, a man habited like a savage, covered with ivy, holding in one of his hands an oaken plant torn up by the roots, who placed himself before her, and, after holding some discourse with a counterfeit echo, repeated a poetical oration in her praise, which was well The savage men, or wodehouses, as they are sometimes called, frequently made their appearance in the public shows; they were sometimes clothed entirely with skins, and sometimes they were decorated with oaken leaves, or covered, as above, with ivy. XIII.—PARTIAL IMITATIONS OF ANIMALS.The jugglers and the minstrels, observing how lightly these ridiculous disguisements were relished by the people in general, turned their talents towards the imitating of different animals, and rendered their exhibitions more pleasing by the addition of their new acquirements. Below are specimens of their performances, from the Bodleian MS. before cited. This presents to us the resemblance of a stag. The following, from the same MS., pictures a goat walking erectly on his hinder feet. Neither of these fictitious animals have any fore legs; but to the first the deficiency is supplied by a staff, upon which the actor might recline at pleasure; his face is seen through an aperture on the breast; and, I doubt not, a person was chosen to play this part with a face susceptible of much grimace, which he had an opportunity of setting forth to great advantage, with a certainty of commanding the plaudits of his beholders. It was also possible to heighten the whimsical appearance of this disguise by a motion communicated to the head; a trick the man might easily enough perform, by putting one of his arms into the hollow of his neck; and probably the neck was made pliable for that purpose. In the subjoined delineation, from the same MS., we find a boy, with a mask resembling the head of a dog, presenting a scroll of parchment to his master. In the original there are two more boys, who are following, disguised in a similar manner, and each of them holding a like scroll of parchment. The wit of this performance, I protest, I cannot discover. XIV.—THE HORSE IN THE MORRIS-DANCE.The prancing and curveting of horses was counterfeited in the hobby-horse, the usual concomitant of the morris-dance. I have already spoken on this subject; XV.—COUNTERFEIT VOICES OF ANIMALS.I have not been able to ascertain how far the ancient jugglers exerted their abilities in counterfeiting the articulation of animals; but we may reasonably suppose they would not have neglected so essential a requisite to make their imitations perfect. In the reign of queen Anne, a man whose name was Clench, a native of Barnet, made his appearance at London. He performed at the corner of Bartholomew-lane, behind the Royal Exchange. His price for admittance was one shilling each person. I have his advertisement before me; XVI.—ANIMALS TRAINED FOR BAITING.Training of bulls, bears, horses, and other animals, for the purpose of baiting them with dogs, was certainly practised by the jugglers; and this vicious pastime has the sanction of high antiquity. Fitz-Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II., tells us that, in the forenoon of every holiday, during the winter season, the young Londoners were amused with boars opposed to each other in battle, or with bulls and full-grown bears baited by dogs. XVII.—PARIS GARDEN.There were several places in the vicinity of the metropolis set apart for the baiting of beasts, and especially the district of Saint Savour's parish in Southwark, called Paris Garden; which place contained two bear-gardens, said to have been the first that were made near London; and in them, according to Stow, were scaffolds for the spectators to stand upon: XVIII.—BULL AND BEAR-BAITING PATRONIZED BY ROYALTY.Bull and bear-baiting is not encouraged by persons of rank and opulence in the present day; and when practised, which rarely happens, it is attended only by the lowest and most despicable part of the people; which plainly indicates a general refinement of manners and prevalency of humanity among the moderns; on the contrary, this barbarous pastime was highly relished by the nobility in former ages, and countenanced by persons of the most exalted rank, without exception even of the fair sex. Erasmus, who visited England in the reign of Henry VIII., says, there were "many herds of bears maintained in this country for the purpose of baiting." XIX.—BULL AND BEAR-BAITING, HOW PERFORMED.The manner in which these sports were exhibited towards the close of the sixteenth century, is thus described by Hentzner, XX.—BEARS AND BEAR-WARDS.When a bear-baiting was about to take place, the same was publicly made known, and the bear-ward previously paraded the streets with his bear, to excite the curiosity of the populace, and induce them to become spectators of the sport. The animal, XXI.—BAITING IN QUEEN ANNE'S TIME.The two following advertisements, "At the Bear Garden in Hockley in the Hole, near Clerkenwell Green, this present Monday, there is a great match to be fought by two Dogs of Smithfield Bars against two Dogs of Hampstead, at the Reading Bull, for one guinea to be spent; five lets goes out of hand; which goes fairest and farthest in wins all. The famous Bull of fireworks, which pleased the gentry to admiration. Likewise there are two Bear-Dogs to jump three jumps apiece at the Bear, which jumps highest for ten shillings to be spent. Also variety of bull-baiting and bear-baiting; it being a day of general sport by all the old gamesters; and a bull-dog to be drawn up with fireworks. Beginning at three o'clock." "At William Well's bear-garden in Tuttle-fields, Westminster, this present Monday, there will be a green Bull baited; and twenty Dogs to fight for a collar; and the dog that runs farthest and fairest wins the collar; with other diversions of bull and bear-baiting. Beginning at two of the clock." XXII.—SWORD-PLAY.The sword-dance, or, more properly, a combat with swords and bucklers, regulated by music, was exhibited by the Saxon gleemen. We have spoken on this subject in a former chapter, and resume it here, because the jugglers of the middle ages were famous for their skill in handling the sword. This combat, represented from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the Royal Library, These combats bore some resemblance to those performed by the Roman gladiators; for which reason the jugglers were sometimes called gladiators by the early historians; "Mimi, salii, balatrones, Æmiliani, gladiatores, palÆstritÆ—et tota joculatorum copia, &c." It is said that many robberies and murders were committed by these gladiators; hence the appellation of swash buckler, a term of reproach, "from swashing," says Fuller, "and making a noise on the buckler, and ruffian, which is the same as a swaggerer. West Smithfield was formerly called Ruffian Hall, where such men usually met, casually or otherwise, to try masteries with sword and buckler; more were frightened than hurt, hurt than killed therewith, it being accounted unmanly to strike beneath the knee. But since that desperate traytor Rowland Yorke first used thrusting with rapiers, swords and bucklers are disused." Such exercises had been practised by day and by night, to the great annoyance of the peaceable inhabitants of the city; and by the statute of Edward I. the offenders were subjected to the punishment of imprisonment for forty days; to which was afterwards added a mulct of forty marks. The bear-gardens were the usual places appropriated by the masters of defence for public trials of skill. These exhibitions XXIII.—PUBLIC SWORD-PLAY.The following show-bill, dated July 13, 1709, contains the common mode of challenging and answering used by the combatants; it is selected from a great number now lying before me; "At the Bear Garden in Hockley in the Hole, near Clerkenwell Green, a trial of skill shall be performed between Two Masters of the noble Science of Defence on Wednesday next, at two of the clock precisely. "I George Gray, born in the city of Norwich, who have fought in most parts of the West Indies, namely, Jamaica and Barbadoes, and several other parts of the world, in all twenty-five times, and upon a stage, and never yet was worsted, and being now lately come to London, do invite James Harris to meet and exercise at these following weapons, namely, back-sword, sword and dagger, sword and buckler, single falchon, and case of falchons." "I James Harris, Master of the said noble Science of Defence, who formerly rid in the horse-guards, and hath fought a hundred and ten prizes, and never left a stage to any man, will not fail, God willing, to meet this brave and bold inviter at the time and place appointed; desiring sharp swords, and from him no favour. No person to be upon the stage but the seconds. Vivat Regina!" XXIV.—QUARTER-STAFF.In another challenge the quarter-staff is added to the list of weapons named on these occasions. Quarter-staff Dr. Johnson explains to be "A staff of defence, so called, I believe, from the manner of using it; one hand being placed at the middle, and the other equally between the end and the middle." XXV.—WRESTLING, &c. IN BEAR-GARDENS.Wrestling, and such other trials of strength and activity as had formerly been exhibited in the spectacles of the minstrels and jugglers, were at this period transferred to the bear-gardens, where they continued in practice till the total abolition of those polite places of amusement. XXVI.—EXTRAORDINARY TRIAL OF STRENGTH.I shall conclude this chapter with the two following instances of bodily power, recorded by our historians. The first is of Courcy, earl of Ulster; who, in the presence of John king of England and Philip of France, cut through a helmet of steel with one blow of his sword, and struck the weapon so deeply into the post upon which the helmet was placed, that no one but himself was able to draw it out again. The pastime of bowling, whether practised upon open greens or in bowling-alleys, was probably an invention of the middle ages. I cannot by any means ascertain the time of its introduction; but I have traced it back to the thirteenth century. The earliest representation of a game played with bowls, that I have met with, occurs in a MS. in the Royal Library, Here two small cones are placed upright at a distance from each other; and the business of the players is evidently to bowl at them alternately; the successful candidate being he who could lay his bowl the nearest to the mark. The French, according to Cotgrave, had a similar kind of game, called Carreau, from a square stone which, says he, "is laid in level Below these we see three persons engaged in the pastime of bowling; and they have a small bowl, or jack, according to the modern practice, which serves them as a mark for the direction of their bowls: the action of the middle figure, whose bowl is supposed to be running towards the jack, will not appear by any means extravagant to such as are accustomed to visit the bowling-greens. The following little poem, by William Stroad, which I found in "Justin Pagitt's Memorandum Book," A PARALLEL BETWIXT BOWLING AND PREFERMENT. Preferment, like a game at boules, To feede our hope hath divers play: Heere quick it runns, there soft it roules, The betters make and shew the way On upper ground, so great allies Doe many cast on their desire; Some up are thrust and forc'd to rise, When those are stopt that would aspire. Some, whose heate and zeal exceed, Thrive well by rubbs that curb their haste, And some that languish in their speed Are cherished by some favour's blaste; Some rest in other's cutting out The fame by whom themselves are made; Some fetch a compass farr about, And secretly the marke invade. Some get by knocks, and so advance Their fortune by a boysterous aime: And some, who have the sweetest chance, Their en'mies hit, and win the game. The fairest casts are those that owe No thanks to fortune's giddy sway; Such honest men good bowlers are Whose own true bias cutts the way. In the three delineations just represented, we may observe that the players have only one bowl for each person: the modern bowlers have usually three or four. II.—BOWLING-GREENS FIRST MADE BY THE ENGLISH.Bowling-greens are said to have originated in England; III.—BOWLING-ALLEYS.The inconveniency to which the open greens for bowling were necessarily obnoxious, suggested, I presume, the idea of making An hundredth knightes, truly tolde, Shall play with bowles in alayes colde." Andrew Borde, in his Dictarie of Helthe, describing a nobleman's mansion, supposes it not to be complete without "a bowling-alley." Among the additions made by Henry VIII. at Whitehall, were "divers fair tennice-courtes, bowling-alleys, and a cock-pit." It appears that soon after the introduction of bowling-alleys they were productive of very evil consequences; for they became not only exceedingly numerous, but were often attached to places of public resort, which rendered them the receptacles of idle and dissolute persons; and were the means of promoting a pernicious spirit of gambling among the younger and most unwary part of the community. The little room required for making these bowling-alleys was no small cause of their multiplication, particularly in great towns and cities. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these nurseries of vice were universally decried, and especially such of them as were established within the city and suburbs of London, IV.—LONG-BOWLING.Bowling-alleys, I believe, were totally abolished before I knew London; but I have seen there a pastime which might originate from them, called long-bowling. It was performed in a narrow enclosure, about twenty or thirty yards in length, and at the farther end was placed a square frame with nine small pins upon it; at these pins the players bowled in succession; and a boy, who stood by the frame to set up the pins that were beat down by the bowl, called out the number, which was Bowling, according to an author in the seventeenth century, is a pastime "in which a man shall find great art in choosing out his ground, and preventing the winding, hanging, and many turning advantages of the same, whether it be in open wilde places, or in close allies; and for his sport, the chusing of the bowle is the greatest cunning; your flat bowles being best for allies, your round byazed bowles for open grounds of advantage, and your round bowles, like a ball, for green swarthes that are plain and level." V.—SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF BILLIARDS.Below is a representation which seems to bear some analogy to bowling. Here the bowls, instead of being cast by the hand, are driven with a battoon, or mace, through an arch, towards a mark at a distance from it; and hence, I make no doubt, originated the game of billiards, which formerly was played with a similar kind of arch and a mark called the king, but placed upon the table instead of the ground. The improvement by adding the table answered two good purposes; it precluded the necessity for the player to kneel, or stoop exceedingly, when he struck the bowl and accommodated the game to the limits of a chamber. VI.—KAYLES.Kayles, written also cayles and keiles, derived from the French word quilles, was played with pins, and no doubt gave origin to the modern game of nine-pins; though primitively the kayle-pins In this engraving, from a Book of Prayers in the possession of Francis Douce, esq., the pastime of kayles is playing with six pins. The annexed is from another drawing on a MS. in the Royal Library. Here the pastime is played with eight pins; and the form of these pins is also different, but that might depend entirely upon the fancy of the makers. One of them, in both cases, is taller than the rest. The arrangement of the kayle-pins differs greatly from that of the nine-pins, the latter being placed upon a square frame in three rows, and the former in one row only. The two delineations here copied represent that species of the game called club-kayles, "jeux de quilles À baston," so denominated from the club or cudgel that was thrown at them. VII.—CLOSH.The game of cloish, or closh, mentioned frequently in the ancient statutes, VIII.—LOGGATS.This, I make no doubt, was a pastime analogous to kayles and cloish, but played chiefly by boys and rustics, who substituted bones for pins. "Loggats," says sir Thomas Hanmer, one of the editors of Shakespeare, "is the ancient name of a play or game, which is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the thirty-third statute of Henry VIII.: it is the same which is now called kittle-pins, in which the boys often make use of bones instead of wooden pins, throwing at them with another bone instead of bowling." Hence Shakespeare, in Hamlet, speaks thus; "did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with them?" And this game is evidently referred to in an old play, entitled The longer thou livest the more Fool thou art, published in the reign of queen Elizabeth, At skales, and the playing with a sheepes-joynte. In skales, or kayles, the sheepes-joynte was probably the bone used instead of a bowl. IX.—NINE-PINS—SKITTLES.The kayle-pins were afterwards called kettle, or kittle-pins; and hence, by an easy corruption, skittle-pins, an appellation well known in the present day. The game of skittles, as it is now played, differs materially from that of nine-pins, though the same number of pins are required in both. In performing the latter, the player stands at a distance settled by mutual consent of the parties concerned, and casts the bowl at the pins: the contest is, to beat them all down in the fewest throws. In playing at skittles, there is a double exertion; one by bowling, and the other by tipping: the first is performed at a given distance, and the second standing close to the frame upon which the pins are placed, and throwing the bowl through in the midst of them; in both cases, the number of pins beaten down before the return of the bowl, for it usually passes beyond the frame, The preceding quotation from Hanmer intimates that the kittle-pins were sometimes made with bones; and this assertion is strengthened by the language of a dramatic writer, the author of the Merry Milk-maid of Islington, in 1680, who makes one of his characters speak thus to another: "I'll cleave you from the skull to the twist, and make nine skittles of thy bones." X.—DUTCH-PINS.Dutch-pins is a pastime much resembling skittles; but the pins are taller and slenderer, especially in the middle pin, which is higher than the rest, and called the king-pin. The pins are nine in number, and placed upon a frame in the manner of skittles; and the bowls used by the performers are very large, but made of a light kind of wood. The game consists of thirty-one scores precisely; and every player first stands at a certain distance from the frame, and throws his bowl at the pins, which is improperly enough called bowling; afterwards he approaches the frame and makes his tipp by casting the bowl among the pins, and the score towards the game is determined by the number of them beaten down. If this pin be taken out singly, when the bowl is thrown from a distance, the game is won; this instance excepted, it reckons for no more than the other pins. XI.—FOUR-CORNERS.Is so called from four large pins which are placed singly at each angle of a square frame. The players stand at a distance, which may be varied by joint consent, and throw at the pins a large heavy bowl, which sometimes weighs six or eight pounds. The excellency of the game consists in beating them down by the fewest casts of the bowl. XII.—HALF-BOWL.This is one of the games prohibited by Edward IV.; XIII.—NINE-HOLES.This is mentioned as a boyish game, played at the commencement of the seventeenth century. I have not met with any description of this pastime; but I apprehend it resembled a modern one frequently practised at the outskirts of the metropolis; and said to have been instituted, or more probably revived, about 1780, as a succedaneum for skittles, when the magistrates caused the skittle grounds in and near London to be levelled, and the frames removed. Hence some say the game of nine-holes was I have formerly seen a pastime practised by school-boys, called nine-holes: it was played with marbles, which they bowled at a board, set upright, resembling a bridge, with nine small arches, all of them numbered; if the marble struck against the sides of the arches, it became the property of the boy to whom the board belonged; but, if it went through any one of them, the bowler claimed a number of marbles equal to the number upon the arch it passed through. XIV.—JOHN BULL.This is the name of a modern pastime, which may be played in the open air, or in a room. A square flat stone, being laid level on the surface of the ground, or let into the floor, is subdivided into sixteen small squares; in every one of these compartments a number is affixed, beginning from one; the next in value being five, the next ten; thence passing on by tens to an hundred, and thence again, by hundreds, to five hundred. These numbers are not placed regularly, but contrasted, so that those XV.—PITCH AND HUSTLE.This is a game commonly played in the fields by the lowest classes of the people. It requires two or more antagonists, who pitch or cast an equal number of halfpence at a mark set up at a short distance; and the owner of the nearest halfpenny claims the privilege to hustle first; the next nearest halfpenny entitles the owner to a second claim; and so on to as many as play. When they hustle, all the halfpence pitched at the mark are thrown into a hat held by the player who claims the first chance; after shaking them together, he turns the hat down upon the ground; and as many of them as lie with the impression of the head upwards belong to him; the remainder are then put into the hat a second time, and the second claimant performs the same kind of operation; and so it passes in succession to all the players, or until all the halfpence appear with the heads upwards. Sometimes they are put into the hands of the player, instead of a hat, who shakes them, and casts them up into the air; but in both instances the heads become his property: but if it should so happen, that, after all of them have hustled, there remain some of the halfpence that have not come with the heads uppermost, the first player then hustles again, and the others in succession, until they do come so. XVI.—BULL-BAITING IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES.I have already informed my readers, that bull-baiting, or worrying of bulls with dogs, was one of the spectacles exhibited XVII.—BULL-RUNNING AT STAMFORD, &c.This is another barbarous diversion somewhat different from bull-baiting, and much less known: I do not recollect that it was regularly practised in any part of the kingdom, excepting at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, and at Tutbury, in Staffordshire. The traditionary origin of the bull-running at Stamford, and the manner in which it was performed in the seventeenth century, XVIII.—BULL-RUNNING AT TUTBURY.The company of minstrels belonging to the manor of Tutbury had several peculiar privileges granted to them by a charter from John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster. The historian of Staffordshire Before we came to it, we heard a strange shouting, And all that were in it looked madly, For some were a bull-back, some dancing a morrice, And some singing Arthur O'Bradley. XIX.—BADGER-BAITING.May also be placed in this chapter. In order to give the better effect to this diversion, a hole is dug in the ground for the retreat of the animal; and the dogs run at him singly in succession; for it is not usual, I believe, to permit any more than one of them to attack him at once; and the dog which approaches him with the least timidity, fastens upon him the most firmly, and brings him the soonest from his hole, is accounted the best. The badger was formerly called the "grey," hence the denomination of greyhounds applied to a well known species of dogs, on account of their having been generally used in the pursuit of this animal. XX.—COCK-FIGHTING.This barbarous pastime, which claims the sanction of high antiquity, was practised at an early period by the Grecians, and probably still more anciently in Asia. It is a very common sport, and of very long standing, in China. In the reign of Edward III. cock-fighting became a fashionable amusement; it was then taken up more seriously than it formerly had been, and the practice extended to grown persons; even at that early period it began to be productive of pernicious consequences, and was therefore prohibited in 1366 by a public proclamation, in which it was ranked with other idle and unlawful pastimes. But notwithstanding it was thus degraded and discountenanced, it still maintained its popularity, and in defiance of all temporary opposition has descended to the modern I shall not expatiate upon the nature and extent of this fashionable divertisement; but merely mention a part of it called the Welch main, which seems to be an abuse of the modern times; and as a late judicious author justly says, "a disgrace to us as Englishmen." In the old illuminated manuscripts we frequently meet with paintings representing cocks fighting; but I do not recollect to have seen in any of them the least indication of artificial spurs; the arming their heels with sharp points of steel is a cruelty, I In addition to what has been said, I shall only observe, that the ancients fought partridges and quails as well as cocks; in like manner, says Burton, as the French do now; XXI.—THROWING AT COCKS.If the opposing of one cock to fight with another may be justly esteemed a national barbarism, what shall be said of a custom more inhuman, which authorised the throwing at them with sticks, and ferociously putting them to a painful and lingering death? I know not at what time this unfortunate animal became the object of such wicked and wanton abuse: the sport, if such a denomination may be given to it, is certainly no recent invention, and perhaps is alluded to by Chaucer, "——There was a cocke, For that a priestes' sonne gave hym a knocke, Upon his legges, when he was yonge and nice, He made him for to lose his benefice." The story supposes the cock to have overheard the young man ordering his servant to call him at the cock-crowing; upon which the malicious bird forbore to crow at the usual time, and owing to this artifice the youth was suffered to sleep till the ordination was over. Throwing at cocks was a very popular diversion, especially among the younger parts of the community. Sir Thomas Moore, who wrote in the sixteenth century, describing the state of childhood, speaks of his skill in casting a cok-stele, that is, a stick or cudgel to throw at a cock. It was universally practised upon Shrove-Tuesday. If the poor bird by chance had its legs broken, or was otherwise so lamed as not to be able to stand, the barbarous owners were wont to support it with sticks, in order to prolong the pleasure received from the reiteration of its torment. The magistrates, greatly to their credit, have for some years past put a stop to this wicked custom, and at present it is nearly, if not entirely, discontinued in every part of the kingdom. In some places it was a common practice to put the cock into an earthen vessel made for the purpose, and to place him in such a position that his head and tail might be exposed to view; the vessel, with the bird in it, was then suspended across the street, about twelve or fourteen feet from the ground, to be thrown at by such as chose to make trial of their skill; two-pence was paid for four throws, and he who broke the pot, and delivered the cock from his confinement, had him for a reward. At North Walsham, in Norfolk, about 1760, some wags put an owl into one of these vessels; and having procured the head and tail of a dead cock, they placed them in the same position as if they had appertained to a living one: the deception was successful, and at last, a labouring man belonging to the town, after several fruitless attempts, broke the pot, but missed his prize; for the owl being set at liberty, instantly flew away, to his great astonishment, and left him nothing more than the head and tail of the dead bird, with the potsherds, for his money and his trouble; this ridiculous adventure exposed him to the continual laughter of the town's people, and obliged him to quit the place, to which, I am told, he returned no more. XXII.—DUCK-HUNTING.This is another barbarous pastime, and for the performance it is necessary to have recourse to a pond of water sufficiently extensive to give the duck plenty of room for making her escape from the dogs when she is closely pursued; which she does by diving as often as any of them come near to her. Duck-hunting was much practised in the neighbourhood of London about thirty or forty years ago; but of late it is gone out of fashion; Sometimes the duck is tormented in a different manner, without the assistance of the dogs; by having an owl tied upon her back, and so put into the water, where she frequently dives in order to escape from the burden, and on her return for air, the miserable owl, half drowned, shakes itself, and hooting, frightens the duck; she of course dives again, and replunges the owl into the water; the frequent repetition of this action soon deprives the poor bird of its sensation, and generally ends in its death, if not in that of the duck also. XXIII.—SQUIRREL-HUNTING.This is a rustic pastime, and commonly practised at Christmas-time and at Midsummer; those who pursue it find plenty of exercise; but nothing can excuse the wantonly tormenting so harmless an animal. XXIV.—RABBIT-HUNTING.Hentzner, who visited England at the close of the sixteenth century, mentions this diversion, and assures us that he saw it performed in the presence of the lord mayor of London, when the annual wrestling was concluded: his words are as follow; "after this is over, a parcel of live rabbits are turned loose among the crowd, which are pursued by a number of boys, who endeavour to catch them with all the noise they can make." |