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 UNIYGRSITY OP CALIFORNIA 
 LIBRARY ^s-x- 
 
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 LAUF^ENCE HU1 K 
 
OTHER TIMES 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SEASONS 
 
 BY 
 
 LAURENCE HUTTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER AND BROTHERS 
 MDCCCXCV 
 
BY LAURENCE HUTTON. 
 
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 publishers on receipt of the price. 
 
 Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
TO 
 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 
 
 MY CONSTANT FRIEND 
 
 IN ALL TIMES AND FOR MANY SEASONS 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 %x &ffectionatd EnscrtbeU 
 
 39G453 
 
TO THE GENTLE READER 
 
 JI7ITH one exception, these papers were 
 contributed to HARPER S WEEKLY 
 in the proper Seasons, and from Time to 
 Time. 
 
 Their preparation has afforded me no 
 little amusement in the collection of the 
 truths they present, and in the collation 
 of the traditions they preserve. 
 
 The task, which was a great pleasure 
 to me, involved the consultation of many 
 curious works, devoted to the history of 
 Out-of-Door Life, and to the beginnings 
 of the observance of the Days we Celebrate. 
 
 I am prepared to affirm, on informa 
 tion and belief, that the facts herein set 
 down have never hitherto been gathered 
 together in any single volume. And I 
 venture to hope that they may give 
 you as much pleasure in the reading as 
 I have found in the writing of them. 
 
 L.H. 
 
 Saint Lawrence s Day, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Paper p a ~e 
 
 TO THE READER vii 
 
 I. FOOT-BALL t 
 
 II. PRIZE-FIGHTS n 
 
 III. TENNIS 22 
 
 IV. GOLF 32 
 
 V. BOAT-RACES 42 
 
 VI. TRANSPORTATION 52 
 
 VII. TOBACCO 7 o 
 
 VIII. COFFEE 85 
 
 IX. A GAMMON OF BACON 95 
 
 X. ST. VALENTINE S DAY 
 
 XI. APRIL-FOOL S DAY 
 
 105 
 
 119 
 
 XII. GOOD-FRIDAY 128 
 
 XIII. MAY-DAY I39 
 
 XIV. THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER 148 
 
 XV. CHRISTMAS DAY X 6 3 
 
FOOT-BALL AS IT WAS PLAYED IN 
 ANCIENT SEASONS 
 
 "Oswald. I ll not be struck, my lord. 
 Kent. Nor tripped neither ; you base foot-ball player. 
 
 [ Tripping up his heels? 
 -King Lear, Act I., Scene IV. 
 
 HE Greeks played Foot-ball, 
 according to the National 
 Encyclopedia, and so did 
 the Romans ; the latter us 
 ing their hands as well as 
 their feet. The game is supposed to have 
 entered England with Csesar, although, ac 
 cording to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
 the first distinct mention of it was made 
 in the twelfth century, when William Fitz- 
 stephen, in his History of London, wrote 
 of the young men of the city going out 
 on certain festivals to play Foot-ball after 
 dinner. 
 
L ii tip iji^ Lprttlon Guildhall Liber Memo- 
 randorum\& a paragraph, in Latin, which 
 Mr. Arthur W. Hogg has translated as 
 follows : " And because of the great noise 
 in the City by some players of large Foot 
 Balls, thrown in the meadows of the peo 
 ple, from which evils might arise, which 
 God forbid : We command and forbid on 
 behalf of the King, under pain of impris 
 onment, such game to be used in the City 
 for the future." This was dated April 13, 
 1314, in the reign of Edward II. 
 
 An act of the Parliament of James I. 
 of Scotland, about 1424, contains the fol 
 lowing: "It is a statute, and the King 
 forbiddis that na man play at the Fute- 
 ball under the paine of fiftie schillings, to 
 be raised to the Lord of the land als oft 
 as he be tainted, or to the Scheriffe of the 
 land or his Ministers, gif the Lordes will 
 not punish sik trespassours." Dr. Doran 
 explains that this curious enactment was 
 made because of the game of Foot-ball 
 having infringed upon the more useful 
 practice of archery. Even so early as the 
 reign of Edward III., A.D. 1349, that mon 
 arch, he says, was compelled to send a let- 
 
ter of complaint upon this subject to the 
 sheriffs of London, declaring that the 
 skill in shooting with arrows was almost 
 totally laid aside for the purpose of use 
 less and unlawful games, one of which was 
 Foot-ball. 
 
 Sir Thomas Elyot, in The Gouernour, 
 1557, speaks of " Foote-balle, wherein is 
 nothyng but beastelye fury and extreme 
 violence, whereof procedeth hurte, and 
 consequently rancour and malice doe re- 
 mayne with them that be wounded, where 
 fore it is to be put in perpetual silence." 
 
 Master Philip Stubbes, in his Anatomie 
 of Abuses, 1 583, was peculiarly bitter in his 
 denunciation of the game. It is not pos 
 sible to quote him in full, but he said, 
 among other things : " For as concern 
 ing Foot-Ball playing I protest unto you 
 it may rather be called a freendly kinde 
 of fight than a play or recreation ; a 
 bloody and murthering practise than a 
 felowly sporte of pastime. For dooth not 
 every one lye in waight for his Adversarie, 
 seeking to overthrow him and to picke 
 him on his nose, though it be uppon hard 
 stones. ... So that by this meanes, some- 
 
times their necks are broken, sometime 
 their backs; sometime their legs, some 
 time their armes ; sometimes one part 
 thrust out of joynt, sometimes another ; 
 sometimes the noses gush out with blood, 
 sometimes their eyes start out. . . . They 
 have the sleight to meet one betwixt two, 
 to dashe him against the hart with their 
 elbows, to hit him under the short ribbes 
 with their griped fists, and with their 
 knees to catch upon the hip, and to pick 
 him on his neck, with a hundred such 
 murthering devices ; and hereof groweth 
 envie, malice, rancour, cholor, hatred, dis 
 pleasure, enmitie, and what not els ; and 
 sometime fighting, brawling, contention, 
 quarrel picking, murther, homicide, and 
 great effusion of blood, as experience day- 
 . ly teacheth." 
 
 It may be remarked in passing that 
 Master Philip Stubbes was not a reporter 
 for the Evening Post! 
 
 There are two distinct references to 
 Foot-ball in the Middlesex County Rec 
 ords in the time of Elizabeth. The first 
 shows the finding of a true bill against 
 certain persons named, and against other 
 
unknown malefactors to the number of a 
 hundred, who "assembled themselves to 
 gether unlawfully and played a certain 
 game called Foot-Ball, by reason of which 
 unlawful game there arose amongst them 
 a great affray, likely to result in homicides 
 and serious accidents." The second is an 
 account of " a Coroner s Inquisition-post 
 mortem on view of the body of Roger 
 Luforde there lying dead." It shows 
 that Nicolas Martyn and Richard Turvey 
 were, on a certain afternoon, playing with 
 other persons at Foot-ball, when the said 
 Roger Luforde and a certain Simon Mal- 
 tus came to the ground. . . . That Richard 
 Turvey struck Roger Luforde on the fore 
 part of his body under the breast, giving 
 him a mortal blow and concussion, of 
 which he died within a quarter of an hour. 
 The game of Foot-ball was suppressed 
 in Manchester in 1608, because of " the 
 great disorder it caused in the town, 
 by which the inhabitants were greatly 
 wronged and charged with the making 
 and the amending of their glass windows, 
 broken yearly and spoiled by a company 
 of lewd and disordered persons using that 
 
unlawful exercise of playing with Foot- 
 Ball in the streets, breaking men s win 
 dows and glasses at their pleasure, and 
 other great enormities." 
 
 James I. of England and VI. of Scot 
 land, in the rules drawn up by his own 
 hand for the recreation of Henry, Prince 
 of Wales, made the following remarks: 
 " From this court I debarre all rough and 
 violent exercises, as Foot-Ball, meeter for 
 laming than making able the users there 
 of ; but the exercises I would have you to 
 use, although moderately, not making a 
 craft of them, are running, leaping, wrest 
 ling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the 
 caitch or tennise, archerie, palle-malle, 
 and such like other fair and pleasant field 
 games." 
 
 The unfortunate Henry did not long sur 
 vive the paternal solicitude, and Charles 
 I. reigned in his stead, changing for a time 
 the whole course of history, and giving 
 the captain of a rival, and a short-haired, 
 team a chance to play Foot-ball with the 
 king s own head. 
 
 James Howell, in his Familiar Letters, 
 1645, gives an account of a serious acci- 
 
dent, in the reign of James I. and VI., 
 which befell Lord Sunderland and some 
 of his servants, against a body of country 
 folk, during a game of Foot-ball. 
 
 There is a proverb in the town of Scone, 
 in the country of Perth, that " All is fair 
 in the Ball of Scone." Sir Frederick 
 Eden in his Statistical Account of Scot 
 land supposes that the game of Foot-ball 
 had its origin in that kingdom in the days 
 of chivalry, when, it is said date not 
 gi ven that an Italian who went into 
 that country challenged all the parishes 
 in the neighborhood of Scone to a Foot 
 ball match, under a penalty should they 
 decline. This they alt did decline but 
 Scone, and Scone, accepting the " dare," 
 beat the foreigner at his own game, and 
 took possession not only of the medal, 
 but of the game itself. 
 
 A writer at the end of the last century 
 thus describes the play at Scone : " He 
 who at any time got the ball into his 
 hands ran with it till overtaken by one of 
 the opposite party, and then, if he could 
 shake himself loose from those on the 
 opposite side who seized him, he ran on ; 
 
if not, he threw the ball from him, unless it 
 was wrested from him by the other party ; 
 but no party was allowed to kick it. The 
 object of the married men was to hang 
 it that is, to put it three times into a 
 small hole on the moor, which was their 
 dool/ or limit, on the one hand ; that of 
 the bachelors was to drown it, or dip it, 
 three times in a deep place in the river, 
 the limit on the other. The party who 
 could effect either of these objects won 
 the game. If neither won, the ball was 
 cut into equal parts at sunset." It would 
 seem that the opposing sides were com 
 posed of Benedicts and Bachelors. The 
 writer closes with the stereotyped remark, 
 " In the course of the play there was usu 
 ally some violence between the parties." 
 
 Robert Chambers writes: "Another 
 old popular custom in Scotland, on Can- 
 dlemass Day [February 2d], was to hold 
 a Foot-Ball match, the east end of a town 
 against the west, the unmarried men 
 against the married, or one parish against 
 another. The Candlemass Ba , as it was 
 called, brought the whole community out 
 in a state of high excitement. On one 
 
occasion, not long ago, when the sport 
 took place in Jedburgh, the contending 
 parties, after a struggle of two hours in 
 the streets, transferred the contention to 
 the bed of the river Jed, and there fought 
 it out amidst a scene of fearful splash and 
 dabbleraent, to the infinite amusement 
 of the multitude, looking on from the 
 bridge." 
 
 Among later-day examples of the sur 
 vival of this amusement we read in the 
 London Daily News, February 11, 1880, 
 that the old wild game of Foot-ball was 
 played on Shrove-Tuesday in the streets, 
 and by all the population of the town of 
 Dorking, in Surrey ; and in Notes and 
 Queries for March 12, 1881, we are told 
 that the ancient custom of playing at 
 Foot-ball in the public streets was ob 
 served at Nuneaton (in Warwickshire) on 
 the afternoon of March ist. During the 
 morning, the writer says, a number of la 
 borers canvassed the town for subscrip 
 tions; and between one and two o clock 
 the ball was started, hundreds of roughs 
 assembling and kicking it through the 
 streets. The police attempted to stop the 
 
game, he adds, but were somewhat rough 
 ly handled. 
 
 The thousands of enthusiasts from all 
 parts of the country who assemble every 
 year at Thanksgiving time in order to 
 give thanks for Foot-ball, will, perhaps, 
 be interested in the reading of all this, 
 and will not be at all surprised to learn 
 that in the month of November, 1575, 
 more than three centuries ago, a certain 
 wedding was postponed in Warwickshire 
 because the bridegroom was " lame of a 
 legge that was broken at Foote Ball." 
 
 Thus does history repeat itself at the 
 end of many years ! 
 
II 
 
 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE OLDEN TIME 
 
 " If I go to him, with my armed fist 
 
 I ll pash him o er the face." 
 Troilus and Cressida, Act. II., Scene III. 
 
 is curious to note that in 
 Joseph Strutt s Sports and 
 Pastimes of the People of 
 England, first published in 
 i8oi,and in all the later edi 
 tions of that valuable work, there is not 
 made any illusion, even in passing, to that 
 particular pastime and sport to which, of 
 all others, perhaps, the Anglo-Saxon is 
 the most addicted. Strutt devotes chap 
 ters to boat-racing and to horse-racing, 
 to shooting and fishing, to wrestling and 
 fencing, to cock-fighting and to dog- 
 fighting, but he is profoundly silent re 
 garding the fighting of men. 
 
 Pollux, so long and so well known as 
 
the twin-brother of Castor, is mentioned 
 by Homer as being " good with his fists," 
 and he is generally regarded as the Patron 
 Saint of Pugilism. This same Homer, in 
 the list of the sports which celebrated the 
 funeral of Patroclus, places Boxing sec 
 ond. It came after the horse-race and 
 before the wrestling-match, showing the 
 distinction between wrestling and spar 
 ring, even in Homer s day whenever 
 that may have been. " The Iliad " shows 
 clearly that the Champion wore a belt, 
 although it does not show that he had to 
 win it; and it speaks of the bands of 
 leather cut from a bull s hide which were 
 worn on the hands. These were intended 
 to protect the knuckles, however, rather 
 than to deaden the blows. The ring was 
 formed by the spectators, sitting or stand 
 ing on the ground in a circle about the 
 contestants. 
 
 Mr. E. B. Mitchell, in The Badminton 
 Library, quotes a distinguished French 
 traveller whose name is not given as 
 saying, in one of the earliest years of the 
 reign of the First George, that " Anything 
 that looks like fighting is delicious to an 
 
Englishman. If two little boys quarrel in 
 the street, the passengers stop, make a 
 ring round them in a moment, that they 
 may come to fisticuffs. . . . During the 
 fight the ring of bystanders encourage the 
 combatants with great delight of heart, 
 and never part them while they fight ac 
 cording to the rules. . . . The fathers and 
 mothers of the boys let them fight on as 
 well as the rest, and hearten him that 
 gives ground or has the worst. ... If a 
 coachman has a dispute about his fare 
 with a gentleman that has hired him, the 
 coachman consents, with all his heart ; 
 the gentleman pulls off his sword and 
 lays it in some shop, with his cane, 
 gloves, and cravat, and boxes in the same 
 manner as I have described above. I 
 once saw the late Duke of Grafton at fisti 
 cuffs in the open street with such a fellow, 
 whom he lammed most horribly." Hearten 
 means " to give heart or courage." The 
 signification of the verb to lam must be 
 familiar to all. 
 
 Mr. James Figg. a native of Oxford 
 shire, seems to have been the first profes 
 sional bruiser who attained any great 
 
prominence in England. He was, we are 
 told, a man of unusual strength and agil 
 ity. He distinguished himself by his victo 
 ries over all his provincial competitors in 
 the arts of single-stick and cudgel-play 
 ing, before he went to the Metropolis to 
 teach the nobility and gentry of that pe 
 riod the manly arts of self-defence with 
 the broadsword and the fists. He fought 
 twice, without gloves, with Sutton, the 
 pipe-maker of Gravesend, and once each 
 with Tom Buck and Bob Stokes. His 
 portrait was engraved in mezzo -tint by 
 Faber. Hogarth, in the second plate of 
 The Rakes Progress, perpetuated his face 
 and figure, and also introduced him, cu 
 riously enough, on horseback, in South- 
 wark Fair, with his head well plastered. 
 Figg died in 1734, and was buried in the 
 Church of St. Mary-le-Bone. 
 
 Figg s Amphitheatre was in Mary-le- 
 Bone Parish, near the Oxford Road, and 
 bear-baiting, tiger-hunting, cock-fighting, 
 dog - fighting, and human fighting were 
 among the attractions of the place. 
 
 Mrs. Stokes, the City Championess, ac 
 cording to an old advertisement, chal- 
 
lenged the Hibernian Championess to 
 meet her at Figg s ; and there are fre 
 quent allusions to similar encounters of 
 the pugilistic sort among the members of 
 the gentler sex of those days. 
 
 In 1768 we are told that two women 
 fought for a new shift, valued at half a 
 crown, in Spa Fields, near Islington, and 
 that the battle was won by " Bruising 
 Peg," who beat her antagonist in a terri 
 ble manner. And in the summer of the 
 same year we learn that in the same ring 
 two women, whose names are not given, 
 fought " an extraordinary battle with two 
 tailors, for a guinea a head," the ladies 
 being the victors. 
 
 Why tailors ? 
 
 Here is a paragraph printed in one of 
 the London papers in 1772 : " Challenge 
 I, Elizabeth Wilkinson, of Clerkenwell, 
 having had some words with Hannah 
 Hyfield, and require satisfaction, do in 
 vite her to meet me upon the stage, and 
 box me for three guineas; each woman 
 holding half a crown in each hand, and 
 the first woman that drops the money to 
 lose the battle." The acceptance appeared 
 
some days later to this effect : " I, Han 
 nah Hyfield, of Newgate Market, hearing 
 of the resoluteness of Elizabeth Wilkin 
 son, will not fail, God willing, to give her 
 more blows than words, desiring home 
 blows, and from her no favor ; she may 
 expect a good thumping." The result of 
 the match, unfortunately, is not recorded. 
 The holding of the half-crown in each 
 band was an ingenious device to prevent 
 the combatants from scratching. The 
 professional combatant refuses to come 
 to the scratch now without a handful of 
 gate-money; and no man who works with 
 his brains can make half so much ! 
 
 John Broughton, who stood five feet 
 eleven inches, and who weighed fourteen 
 stone, has been termed the " Father of 
 the Truly English Art of Self-Defence." 
 He was Champion from 1740 to 1750, and 
 he was the first to draw up any definite 
 rules for the regulation of the Prize-fight. 
 His most distinguished patron was the 
 distinguished Duke of Cumberland, of the 
 Blood Royal, who is said to have gone 
 from Broughton s boxing-booth to Cul- 
 loden, and to have gone directly to 
 
Broughton s on his return from his own 
 great butchering expedition. It is record 
 ed that the duke once took the pugilist 
 to the Continent, and asked his opinion 
 of the Grenadier Guards at Berlin ; and 
 that the Champion expressed his readi 
 ness to fight the whole regiment, one by 
 one, if he were allowed a breakfast be 
 tween each battle. Broughton seems to 
 have been a man of a good deal of com 
 mon-sense, and to have fought with his 
 brains as well as with his fists. He was 
 unfortunate, because too sanguine, in an 
 encounter with one Jack Slack, however, 
 and he lost his popularity and his prestige 
 at one fell swoop between the eyes. The 
 Noble and Right Royal duke was his 
 financial backer on this occasion, and he 
 is reported to have jeered at the fallen 
 champion, whose defeat cost his Royal 
 Highness ten thousand guineas. 
 
 At Broughton s Amphitheatre for Box 
 ing, otherwise called "the Tottenham 
 Court Nursery," the pugilistic encounters 
 took place upon an uncovered platform 
 in a yard open to the public street. An 
 advertisement of this establishment given 
 
in full in Old and New London is worth 
 quoting here in part. " A lecture on Man 
 hood or Gymnastic Physiology, wherein 
 the whole Theory and Practice of the 
 Art of Boxing will be fully explained by 
 various Operators on the Animal CEcon- 
 omy and the Principals of Championism, 
 illustrated by proper Experiments on the 
 Solids and Fluids of the Body, together 
 with the True Method of investigating 
 the Nature of the Blows, Stops, Cross- 
 buttocks, etc., incident to Combatants. 
 The whole leading to the most successful 
 Method of beating a Man deaf, dumb, 
 lame, and blind." A foot-note states that 
 "The Syllabus, or Compendium, for the 
 use of Students in Athleticks, referring to 
 Matters explained in this Lecture, may 
 be had of Mr. Professor Broughton in 
 Market Lane, where proper Instructions 
 in the Art and Practice of Boxing are 
 delivered, without Loss of Eye or Limb 
 to the Student." 
 
 Peter Cunningham preserves the fol 
 lowing extract from the London Daily 
 Advertiser of December 11, 1745: "At 
 Broughton s Amphitheatre this day will 
 
be a tremendous decision of manhood be 
 tween the celebrated Champions James 
 and Smallwood. Note, as this contest is 
 likely to be rendered horrible with blood 
 and bruises, all Frenchmen are desired to 
 come fortified with a proper quantity of 
 hartshorn." The price of general admis 
 sion is not given ; but Noblemen and Gen 
 tlemen were told that they could obtain 
 tickets for five shillings, " which would ad 
 mit them into a part of the house appro 
 priated for their better accommodation." 
 
 Broughton died in 1789, " eminently re 
 spected," and in his eighty-fifth year. 
 
 The only other distinguished bruiser 
 who seems to have enjoyed the confidence 
 and friendship of royalty was John Jack 
 son, who was blessed by the patronage of 
 George the Fourth, and who even assisted 
 as a page at the coronation of the First 
 Gentleman in Europe. His limbs are de 
 scribed as being elegantly proportioned, 
 and his arms, we are told, for athletic 
 beauty and development were not to be 
 surpassed. Lord Byron, in a Note on 
 Don Juan Canto II., refers to his "old 
 friend and corporeal pastor and master, 
 
John Jackson, Esquire, Professor of Pu 
 gilism," and he speaks of "the strength 
 and symmetry of his model of a form, 
 together with his good humor and his 
 athletic as well as mental accomplish 
 ments." Several letters of Byron to Jack 
 son are preserved in Moore s Life of the 
 former; and Moore says that the Profes 
 sor " kept a very neat establishment," 
 where he made a thousand pounds a year 
 by teaching his art. He was exceedingly 
 exclusive in his choice of pupils, and he 
 admitted no person to his " parlours " 
 who was not properly introduced. Jack 
 son died in retirement, in 1845, and he 
 lies under an altar tomb, with a pompous 
 epitaph and characteristic and symbolic 
 carvings, in Brompton Cemetery. 
 
 Coventry Patmore, in his Diary, gives 
 a curious picture of Hazlitt at a Prize 
 Fight in 1822. It was the famous set-to 
 between the Gas-Man and Neate, which 
 was the talk of the town. Says Mr. Pat- 
 more : " After it was over we joined com 
 pany, and I then found that he [Hazlitt] 
 had taken the most profound metaphysi 
 cal as well as personal interest in the 
 
battle ; and I never heard him talk finer 
 or more philosophically than he did on 
 the subject which he treated and just 
 ly, I think as one eminently worthy of 
 being so considered and treated. As a 
 study of human nature and the varieties of 
 its character and constitution, he looked 
 upon the scene as the finest sight he had 
 ever witnessed ; and as a display of animal 
 courage he spoke of the battle as nothing 
 short of sublime. I found that he had 
 paid the most intense attention to every 
 part of the combat, had watched the va 
 rious chances and changes of its progress 
 with the eye and tact of an experienced 
 amateur, and could have given (and in fact 
 afterwards did give in the New Monthly 
 Magazine) an infinitely better, because a 
 more characteristic and intelligible, ac 
 count of its details than the professional 
 reporters employed for that purpose." 
 
 The gentle author of The Table- Talk as 
 a sporting editor and special correspond 
 ent at a Prize - fight, speaking of the mill 
 as " a sublime spectacle," is only another 
 example of the love which every Anglo- 
 Saxon is supposed to have for a row. 
 
Ill 
 
 TENNIS IN ANCIENT SEASONS 
 
 " Renouncing clean 
 
 The faith they have in tennis, and tall stockings, 
 Short blister d breeches." 
 
 Henry VIII., Act I., Scene III. 
 
 N the spring a young man s fan 
 cy fondly turns to thoughts 
 of "love," and "let," and 
 "doubles," and "Vantage," 
 and other Tennis terms. 
 But little does he realize and perhaps 
 less does he care what agonies the phi 
 lologists have endured in trying to ac 
 count for these terms, and in trying to 
 explain the word "Tennis" itself. 
 
 The antiquaries affirm that there is no 
 reference to ball-playing of any kind in 
 the Sacred Scriptures, and that there is 
 no allusion to it among the Assyrian in 
 scriptions. Isaiah, however, says that the 
 Lord will surely violently turn and toss 
 
the wicked like a ball into a large country , 
 and Mr. Flinders Petrie found, some sixty 
 miles south of Cairo, and not very long 
 ago, balls about the size of billiard balls 
 which are made of leather and of wood ; 
 and among them were " tip-cats," both of 
 these, he believes, dating back some four 
 thousand years. 
 
 The game of Hand-Ball, from which 
 Tennis is derived, is known to have been 
 popular in England and France in remote 
 times. The French King Louis X. is 
 said to have died of a severe cold caught 
 while playing ball at Vincennes, in the 
 Fourteenth Century, and an old plan of 
 Windsor Castle, made in the Fifteenth 
 Century, exhibits what is termed a " Ten- 
 nys Courte." 
 
 In Wynkyn de Worde s Crony cles of 
 Englande, 1528, we find the following: 
 " And somewhat in scorne and despyte, 
 he [the Dauphin] sent to hym [Henry V. 
 of England] a tonne full of Tenes balles." 
 On this hint spoke Shakspere in his Henry 
 V., Act I., Scene II.: 
 
 "We are glad, the Dauphin is so pleasant with us; 
 His present, and your pains, we thank you for; 
 
When we have match d our rackets to these balls, 
 We will, in France, by God s grace, play a set, 
 Shall strike his father s crown into the hazard : 
 Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler 
 That all the courts of France will be disturb d 
 With chaces." 
 
 Henry VII. and Henry VIII. were both 
 fond of Tennis, we are told ; and the lat 
 ter added a Tennis Court to the Palace 
 at Whitehall. The oldest establishment 
 of the kind, now remaining in England, 
 was built by the Eighth Henry at Hamp 
 ton Court, when that Palace came into 
 his possession in 1526. 
 
 When Queen Elizabeth was a guest of 
 the Earl of Hertford, in 1 591, we read that 
 " ten of his lordship s servants, after din 
 ner, did hang up lines, squaring out the 
 form of a Tennis Court, and making a 
 cross-line in the middle ; in this square 
 they played, five to five, with handball at 
 bord and cord, as they tearme it, to the 
 great liking of her Highness." 
 
 James I. considered Tennis well be 
 coming the dignity of a prince, and he 
 urged his son Henry, Prince of Wales, to 
 turn his attention to it. Charles I. played 
 it while he was still Duke of York ; but 
 
its first royal enthusiast was the Second 
 Charles, and one of his favorite haunts 
 was the Court in St. James s Street, which 
 was not closed until some thirty years ago. 
 "On the 4th of January, 1664," says Mr. 
 Pepys, " I went to the Tennis Court, and 
 there saw the King play at Tennis. But," 
 he adds, " to see how the King s play was 
 extolled, without any cause at all, was a 
 loathsome sight ; though sometimes in 
 deed he did play very well, and deserved 
 to be commended, but such open flattery 
 is beastly." 
 
 An ancient legend associating Joan of 
 Arc with Tennis may, perhaps, give the 
 game an additional charm in the eyes of 
 certain players. Two centuries ago, and 
 two centuries after her time, a rumor was 
 started in France that the Maid of Orleans 
 was not burned at the stake at all, but 
 lived to marry a soldier and to run away 
 from her husband with a priest. Her 
 brothers and her cousins are reported to 
 have recognized and accepted her ; and 
 in 1452 the cure of Sermaize is said to 
 have testified that "a young woman," 
 with whom he had engaged in a set or 
 
two, urged him to say boldly that he had 
 played Tennis with the Pucelle, " where 
 at," he added, " the deponent was right 
 joyous." This was twenty years or more 
 after the Pucelle is supposed to have 
 been carried to the stake, and when she 
 must have been a very mature young 
 woman indeed. A life-sized, full-length 
 portrait of Joan of Arc with a Tennis 
 Racket is respectfully suggested as a sub 
 ject to the budding Bastien - Lepages of 
 the present Beaux-Arts. 
 
 Tennis evidently sprang from Racket, 
 and Racket appears, according to Mr. F. 
 Phillpott, to have been merely a transi 
 tion from the ruder and less scientific 
 mode of propulsion adopted by our fore 
 fathers in their ball play, who always 
 played " Hand Tennis " with the naked 
 hand. By degrees the glove came into 
 use, and the glove was sometimes lined. 
 The glove was afterwards exchanged for 
 a sort of reticulata manus, the naked hand 
 being bound with thongs or cords made 
 of what is popularly, but improperly, 
 termed catgut, as likely to increase the 
 power and velocity of the ball ; this, in 
 
turn, gave way to artificial palms of the 
 hands, or rackets. 
 
 With a ball, and a wall, and a hand of 
 five fingers, says Mr. A. Holt White, in 
 Notes and Queries, September 27, 1856, you 
 have the game of Fives ; with a bat of wood 
 and then a racket, and two side walls, you 
 have it on a larger scale. With a double 
 Fives-Court and a roof on it for protection 
 against the weather, you have Long Fives, 
 still sometimes played in the Tennis 
 Courts ; and then a game of Long Fives 
 made a game of refined skill is Tennis. 
 Another writer in the same journal de 
 clares that Tennis balls in the Sixteenth 
 Century were made of iron ; and he 
 quotes the inscription upon a still exist 
 ing English provincial tombstone, which 
 shows how a boy was killed by a ball of 
 that description, which hit him on the 
 head! 
 
 Tennis lay dormant in England for 
 many years, and until Croquet died a 
 natural death, not long ago ; and Lawn- 
 Tennis sprang from the ashes of croquet 
 balls, stakes, and mallets. It is gentle 
 and it is mild, this Lawn-Tennis. It takes 
 
young persons, of both sexes, out of doors ; 
 it gives them opportunities for flirtation, 
 and the chance to look pretty in bright 
 flannels; it gives middle-aged persons 
 who do not always flirt, and who do not 
 always devote much thought to their rai 
 ment, the fresh air and the exercise they 
 need ; and now it reigns supreme, while 
 its right there is none to dispute. The 
 historians record its accession in England 
 in 1874, and it was crowned at the First 
 Tournament, held at Lord s the next 
 year. It became the chief ruler of out 
 door sports in America at about the same 
 period. 
 
 Richardson s Dictionary derives the 
 name Tennis " from the French Tenez, 
 accepe, take a word which the French, 
 who excel in this game, use when they 
 hit the ball." The Century Dictionary, on 
 the other hand, asserts that this theory 
 of derivation is purely imaginary, and 
 that it is inconsistent with the usages of 
 the time ; but the Century gives no other 
 etymology in its stead. Dozens of theo 
 ries concerning the origin and the mean 
 ing of the word Tennis are contained in 
 
Notes and Queries for a period extending 
 over a number of years; and column upon 
 column is devoted to the discussion of 
 the subject, the chief contestants being 
 the Rev. W. W. Skeat, author of the 
 Etymological Dictionary, and Mr. Julian 
 Marshall, author of The Annals of Tennis, 
 published in 1878. Mr. Marshall points 
 out that the name Tennis was never ap 
 plied to the game outside of Great Britain 
 and Ireland. In Italy, where it originated, 
 it was called Ilgiuocodellapalla,\K France 
 Le Jeu de la Paume, in Germany simply 
 Ballspiel, in Spain Juego de Pelota, in the 
 Basque Provinces Jugar al ble, in Flan 
 ders Kaelsspel, in Scotland the caitch, or 
 Tennise. 
 
 One ingenious contributor points out 
 the strong analogy between tennis and 
 dance, more especially in the Teutonic 
 form of tanz. The bounding or ricochet 
 motion of the tennis-ball is a dance round 
 the enclosure called a Tennis Court, he 
 contends, and the origin of both words 
 may, therefore, be identical. Mr. George 
 White says that Tennis is the old French 
 game of Le Jeu de la Faume, and that on 
 
striking the ball with the flat of the hand 
 the player (in France) cried out Tenez, as 
 we call out Play ! 
 
 Another theory is that the term came 
 from the French tenie, a fillet, the band or 
 string on which the net is stretched. An 
 other that tenne is German for threshing- 
 floor, and that a smooth, paved thresh 
 ing-floor might have served once for a 
 primitive Tennis Court. Another writer 
 affirms that Tennis is the old English 
 form of tens, the plural of ten, and that 
 Tens is a sort of double Fives ! Another 
 correspondent shows that the word Ten 
 nis was invented before the game Tennis, 
 and that tence (tern s} in its old sense 
 meant a combat or a quarrel, a batting to 
 and fro. Hence Widewood s definition 
 that Tennis is a game in which a ball is 
 driven to and fro with rackets. Tennes 
 in this connection a combat is said to 
 occur in the works of Gower (1400), in 
 Higden s Polychronicon (1482), in Fitzher- 
 bert(i523), in Palgrave (1530), in Eliot 
 (1544), in Shakspere (edition of 1623), in 
 Chapman, and in Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 Mr.. F. Chance discovered that the 
 
names Tennyson and Denison are the 
 same, therefore that St. Denis was St. 
 Tennis, and therefore as St. Denis, on ac 
 count of the traditional episode with his 
 head, which he held in his hand as if it 
 were a ball, might have been instituted 
 the patron saint of all games connected 
 with balls of any kind, and thus might 
 have bestowed his name upon Denis or 
 Tennis, which is pre-eminent among the 
 ball games of France. This seems to be 
 fetched a little far. But if St. Fiacre 
 gave his name to a vehicle of public car 
 riage, why should not St. Denis have done 
 as much for a vehicle of public amuse 
 ment? 
 
 Still the matter is left unsettled. And 
 the present compiler, who has waded 
 through all this discussion of the deriva 
 tions of the term, feels like the boy who 
 was hit on the head with the iron ball ! 
 
IV 
 
 GOLF, AND SOME OF ITS ANCIENT 
 TRADITIONS 
 
 " But we will put it, as they say." 
 
 Love s Labor s Lost, Act V., Scene II. 
 
 OLF, even more than tennis, 
 is essentially the relief and 
 the recreation of the mid 
 dle-aged man. It gives him, 
 in a mild form, something 
 to think about, something to do, some 
 where to go to, and some object to go for. 
 It takes him out of doors, and out of him 
 self. Exercise, as exercise and nothing 
 more, is the hardest of hard work ; but if 
 there be a goal at the end of it, the mid 
 dle-aged man will take exercise, and will 
 ingly. In the city he will promenade, 
 upon paved streets, for miles to buy a 
 newspaper which he can purchase on his 
 
own block ; while in the country he will 
 walk even more miles, over grass and 
 heather, simply for the sake of putting a 
 little round ball into a series of little 
 round holes ; and he will get no end of 
 physical good and no small amount of 
 keen pleasure out of the operation. 
 
 Dr. Jamieson, who spells it "Golf," 
 "Goff/ and "Gouf," speaks of it as a com 
 mon game in the North Country ; and he 
 mentions " Shinty, an inferior species of 
 Golf generally played at by young peo 
 ple." " In London," he adds, " the game is 
 called Hackie. It seems to be the same 
 which is designated Not [Knot] in Glouces 
 tershire," the name being borrowed from 
 the ball, which is made of a knotty piece 
 of wood. 
 
 Shakspere is absolutely silent upon the 
 subject of Golf, and Golf is almost the one 
 point upon which there have been no 
 Queries and no Notes. Even Strutt who 
 spells it " Goff " devotes but little space 
 to it, although in what he says about it he 
 has been followed by all its later histori 
 ans. He considers it the most ancient 
 of all the games which are played with a 
 
34 
 
 ball and a bat ; he says that it answers to 
 a rustic pastime of the Romans, which 
 they played with a ball of leather stuffed 
 with feathers ; he adds that in the reign 
 of Edward III. it was called "cambuca" 
 a curved club, from camag, anything 
 crooked or curved, and bandy-ball from 
 bandy, bent and he gives an interesting 
 illustration of two men playing bandy- 
 ball from a Fourteenth Century manu 
 script illustration, which suggests our 
 Shinney or Hockey rather than Golf. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, who touches upon 
 all sorts of subjects, and who touches 
 nothing which he does not adorn, con 
 tributes a long paper upon Golf to the 
 Badminton Library. He declares that to 
 write the history of the game as it should 
 be written would demand a thorough 
 study of all Scottish Acts of Parliament, 
 Kirk Sessions, records, memoirs, and in 
 fact all Scottish literatures, legislation, 
 and annals from the beginning of time. 
 He feels that he himself is no longer 
 young enough to go so deep into the sub 
 ject ; but from some of the Acts and 
 literature which he does consult, he col- 
 
lects curious facts and anecdotes well 
 worth repeating here. He shows that in 
 1592 the Town Council of Edinburgh 
 prohibited the game on Sundays ; that 
 two early enthusiasts were prosecuted for 
 " playing of the Gowff on the Links of 
 Leith, every Sabbath, the time of the ser- 
 monses"; and that in 1604 one Robert 
 Robertson, of Perth, sat in the seat of 
 repentance for the same cause. He cites 
 a number of distinguished golfers, from 
 kings to caddies ; and he quotes Colonel 
 Fergusson as preserving the tradition 
 that Dame Margaret Ross found means 
 to convert herself into a Golf ball, for the 
 express purpose of spoiling the game of 
 her political adversary. " Can you con 
 ceive a meaner trick ?" says the legend, 
 " than when a hole was about to be 
 halved/ and a gentle touch with the 
 putter was all that was wanted to hole 
 out, and so divide, her ladyship by rolling 
 an eighth of an inch to one side caused the 
 hole to be lost." One cannot help feel 
 ing, as Colonel Fergusson felt, that the 
 political adversary had the best of this 
 encounter, even if he lost his game, and 
 
that the lady in being knocked about by 
 a strong arm and a hard iron must have 
 paid dearly for her mischief. Dame 
 Margaret Ross is supposed to have been 
 the original of Lady Ashton in The Bride 
 of Lammermoor ; but Scott does not allude 
 to the legend of the Golf ball, and he 
 doubts that she ever sold herself to the 
 devil ; her only witchcraft, he believes, 
 consisting in the ascendency of a power 
 ful mind over a weak one. Into what 
 hazards and bunkers she drove her daugh 
 ter, all the world knows. 
 
 Golf like football seems to have been 
 prohibited in Scotland by James II. and 
 by James III., in the middle and in the 
 end of the fifteenth century, the former 
 king issuing a statute that these amuse 
 ments "be utterly cried down," as inter 
 fering with the more serious and the 
 more useful practice of archery. They 
 might kill an Englishman with an arrow; 
 they could only win a medal from him 
 with " a putter " or " a spoon." 
 
 James IV., in his accounts with the 
 Lord High Treasurer of his kingdom, is 
 seen to have spent no little money on 
 
37 
 
 Golf "Clubbes and Balles"in 1503; and 
 he is shown, by public documents still 
 extant, to have played at the Golf with 
 the Erie of Bothwile on the 3d of Febru 
 ary in that year. After Darnley s death 
 it is recorded that Mary Queen of Scots 
 played Golf at St. Andrews but not with 
 the Earl of Bothwell ; and on the 4th of 
 April, 1603, her son appointed a certain 
 burgess of Edinburgh "Maker of Clubs 
 to his Majesty." This was one of the 
 earliest acts of the reign of James ; and 
 Golf became the fashion at once, and 
 once more. It was adopted as the fa 
 vorite amusement of the aristocracy of 
 Britain, on both sides of the border ; and 
 it figures among the healthful, pleasant, 
 sensible sports which this same James IV. 
 of Scotland and I. of England prescribed 
 for his eldest son. From an anonymous 
 paper among the Harleian manuscripts 
 Mr. Strutt quotes the following as show 
 ing Prince Henry s human nature and 
 boyish predilections : " At another time, 
 playing at Goff, a play not unlike to pale- 
 maille, whilst his schoolmaster stood talk 
 ing with another, and marked not his 
 
Highness warning him to stand farther 
 off, the Prince thinking he had gone aside, 
 lifted up his Goff-club to strike the ball ; 
 mean tyme one standing by said to him, 
 Beware that you hit not Master Newton, 
 wherewith, drawing back his hand, said 
 the Prince, Had I done so, I had but 
 paid my debts ! " 
 
 There are boys still living, baldheaded 
 and gray, who remember one famous 
 afternoon, in St. John s Park, New York, 
 when an unpopular schoolmaster, acting 
 as umpire, was seriously doubled up by a 
 baseball bat, discharged after the ball by 
 a left-handed and much-kept-in pupil. 
 The striker always declared it was " a 
 slip"; but it was universally considered 
 as the intentional settlement of many old 
 scores. He was only the eldest son of a 
 merchant prince ; nevertheless, thus again 
 doth history repeat itself. 
 
 It is recorded that Charles I. was play 
 ing Golf on Leith Links in 1642 when he 
 received the news of the Irish Rebellion, 
 and that he left the grounds at once and 
 proceeded to London the next day. The 
 latest crowned monarch to play Golf in 
 
39 
 
 Scotland was that admirable personage 
 whom the English call James II., and 
 the Scotch, James VII. When Duke of 
 Albany, holding court at Holyrood, he 
 played a match with one John Paterson, 
 a poor shoemaker but a good Golfer, 
 against two English noblemen, on these 
 same links of Leith. The stakes were 
 high, the Sassenachs were defeated, and 
 Paterson pocketed the winnings, with 
 which he built a house, standing to this 
 day, on the Canongate, and still called 
 " Golfer s Land," in honor of the event. 
 Above its door is a Latin inscription thus 
 roughly translated : " In the year when 
 Paterson won the prize in Golfing, a 
 game peculiar to the Scots, and in which 
 his ancestors had nine times won the 
 same distinction, he raised this mansion, 
 to commemorate a victory more noble 
 than all the rest." Whether the Scotch 
 team so curiously made up was per 
 mitted to win out of pure loyalty to the 
 crown is not explained, and how James 
 came to surrender the entire stakes can 
 never be explained at all. This, how 
 ever, was without question the most prof- 
 
4 o 
 
 itable match at Golf which a handicapped 
 professional player ever gained ; and the 
 reward is certainly the most substantial 
 and the most enduring in the whole his 
 tory of the game. 
 
 That Golf has contributed a bit of 
 ancient slang to the language Robert 
 Chambers points out in his Book of Days; 
 and he explains that among the many 
 trials of the players in Scotland were the 
 rabbits which infested the links and made 
 little holes in the ground preparatory 
 to burrowing. These are called rabbit 
 scrapes, or simply scrapes, and among the 
 established rules in most of the Golfing 
 associations was one indicating what was 
 permitted to a player when he got into 
 a scrape ; and this he believes to be the 
 origin of the picturesque and expressive 
 phrase. 
 
 The links at St. Andrews, Fifeshire, 
 the grand old University Town of Scot 
 land, claim for themselves the distinction 
 of being the finest in the kingdom. They 
 are two miles in extent, and they contain 
 every variety of ground which the most 
 enthusiastic expert can desire. The Royal 
 
and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews 
 was organized in 1751. It is national 
 rather than local, and it is the parent of 
 all other institutions of its kind, in any 
 land. Among its members have been 
 many of the amateur champions of the 
 world, and her Majesty the Queen is its 
 patroness to-day, although the last mon 
 arch to put himself on record as actually 
 patronizing it was William IV., who pre 
 sented a gold medal with a green ribbon, 
 to be challenged and played for annually, 
 as expressive of his approbation of that 
 ancient institution. This was in January, 
 1837. The King died the same year, and 
 Golf in Scotland is royal only in name 
 and by nature. In America it is fast be 
 coming Boss. 
 
V 
 
 BOAT-RACES IN OTHER DAYS 
 
 And now to London all the crew are gone." 
 Third Part Henry VI., Act II., Scene I. 
 
 HE University Boat-race is a 
 comparatively modern insti 
 tution, and aquatic sports 
 generally in England are of 
 more recent origin than are 
 the other popular out-door recreations 
 and amusements. Boats, however, are 
 almost as old as the waters upon which 
 they float, or as the man who floats them. 
 In the early tombs of Egypt, dating back 
 three thousand years before the coming 
 of the Christ, are still to be found pict 
 ures of boats and of oars and of steering- 
 gear, all of which are so far perfected as 
 to prove that they must have existed, 
 in some form or shape, many hundreds 
 of years before. The early Britons cer- 
 
43 
 
 tainly understood the use of boats ; the 
 Saxons are known to have been expert 
 oarsmen ; and Edgar, the king of all the 
 English, is said to have been the coxswain 
 of an eight-oared boat, rowed by eight 
 oarsmen, all of whom were kings. " At 
 Chester, where he lived with more than 
 kingly charge," sang Drayton, " eight trib 
 utary kings there rowed him in his 
 barge." 
 
 One of the greatest and most famous, 
 as it is perhaps the earliest, of the annual 
 Boat-races on the Thames, is that which 
 is rowed on the ist of August for" Dog- 
 gett s Coat and Badge." It began in 1715, 
 the year after the accession of George I., 
 and it will continue, no doubt, throughout 
 the reign of George V. The competitors 
 are six young water-men whose appren 
 ticeship is about to end, and the course 
 lies between the Old Swan at London 
 Bridge and the White Swan at Chelsea, 
 and is always against the tide 
 
 Thomas Doggett was an Irishman, and 
 a very popular comedian of his day. He 
 was described by Colley Gibber as the 
 most original of all his contemporaries 
 
on the stage, and the strictest observer 
 of nature. He borrowed from no one, 
 and he was imitated by many ; he had 
 remarkable skill in dressing his charac 
 ters to exactness ; he was very humorous, 
 but he never carried his humor too far ; 
 and he was an ardent political admirer 
 of the Hanoverian king, in honor of 
 whom he instituted the race, leaving in 
 his will a sum of money in trust for the 
 purchase of the prizes, the coat to be of 
 Hanoverian orange color, and the badge 
 in the form of the Hanoverian White 
 Horse. 
 
 "And did you ne er hear of a jolly young waterman, 
 
 Who at Blackfriars Bridge used for to ply? 
 He feathered his oars with such skill and dexterity, 
 Winning each heart and delighting each eye"; 
 
 and he was Tom Tug, the hero of Dib- 
 din s The Waterman, who won Doggett s 
 coat and badge and a wife at the same 
 time. She blushed an answer to his woo 
 ing tale and pinned the White Horse on 
 the captured coat, as the curtain went 
 down to the music of the familiar air. 
 
 There is, by-the-way, an original por 
 trait of Doggett in the Garrick Club ; 
 
and a small print of him will be found in 
 George Daniel s Merrie England, pub 
 lished in 1842. 
 
 In the Good Fellows Calendar for 1826 
 we read that on the i8th of August in the 
 previous year " Mr. Kean, the performer," 
 gave a prize wherry, which was rowed for 
 by seven pair of oars. The course was 
 " from Westminster Bridge round a boat 
 moored near Lawn Cottage, and thence 
 to the Red House at Battersea." This, 
 on the part of the performer of the Nine 
 teenth Century, was a direct imitation of 
 the performer of the century before. 
 
 The English University Boat-races have 
 been the subject of song and story for 
 more than fifty years. They figure in 
 history as well as in fiction, and they need 
 but a passing word here. The first race, 
 according to the younger Charles Dick 
 ens, in his Dictionary of the Thames, was 
 rowed in 1836, when Cambridge won. 
 Eight-oared boats, according to Mr. W. 
 B. Woodgate, in The Badminton Library, 
 appeared at Eton before they found their 
 way to Oxford, while at Cambridge they 
 were introduced still later; and he tells 
 
4 6 
 
 us that in 1815 Brazennose won the first 
 place on the river, the earliest record of a 
 college boat race. In Bell s Life in 1834 
 is a paragraph stating that the Head 
 Master at Westminster had expressed 
 himself as disapproving of his scholars 
 rowing a match with Eton, on account of 
 the intemperance and excesses to which 
 such matters lead ! Curiously enough, 
 in the long and full accounts of the Uni 
 versity Boat-races to be found in the Bad 
 minton history of boating, there is no 
 allusion whatever to the International 
 contest, held in August, 1869, between Ox 
 ford and Harvard, which excited so much 
 enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 Although Mr. Dickens gives the history 
 of the Oxford-Cambridge race as begin 
 ning in 1836, Mr. Bartholomew Lane, writ 
 ing in Notes and Queries, April 13, 1878, 
 quotes Bell s Life as saying that the "cut 
 ter" in which the Oxford men rowed the 
 Cantabs in 1829 belonged to Balliol, and 
 was built by King ; and it will be interest 
 ing to rowing men to know that the 
 Messrs. Salter of boating fame to-day 
 are the direct successors of Davis and 
 
King. Mr. Lane adds some curious in 
 formation about the cutters of his time. 
 " My rowing recollections do not go back 
 to 1829," he says," "but I remember 
 racing -boats built not long after that 
 time, and wondrous craft they were, com 
 pared with the swift and frail outriggers 
 of the present. There used to be a gang 
 way fastened along the thwarts from 
 stroke to bow, and each man walked 
 along this gangway, oar in hand, till he 
 reached his proper place. Racing-boats 
 were then much pinched in both bow 
 and aft, but more so at bow s thwart than 
 at stroke s. This made it rather hard 
 lines for poor No. I, for he had not only 
 to contend against the disadvantage of 
 keeping time and stroke with an oar 
 shorter inboard than any of the others, 
 and consequently very badly balanced, 
 but he had to endure more than his fair 
 share of scolding from the coxswain, 
 whose great idea of the principles of row 
 ing and steering in those prescientific days 
 seemed to be that it was at least judi 
 cious to select for his severest censure 
 the man who was farthest off from him." 
 
All students of the biographies of Mr. 
 Tom Brown and of Mr. Verdant Green 
 will remember the graphic accounts of 
 life on the Isis and the Thames contain 
 ed in those delightful works; and the 
 illustrations which Mr. Cuthbert Bede 
 affixed to his own volume will show what 
 sort of a vehicle it was in which the crew 
 of Brazenface bumped, and got bumped, 
 only a few years ago ; while a certain 
 craft calling itself the Sylph, but known 
 as a " tub " by all the boating-men, will 
 be particularly remembered as giving Mr. 
 Green great opportunities for crab-catch 
 ing, and finally as half drowning that 
 famous undergraduate in a very bewil 
 dering part of the river, which is still 
 called "the Gut." 
 
 Although they had nothing to do 
 with racing, the Water Pageants on the 
 Thames were long a prominent feature 
 in London high-life. A Lord Mayor who 
 reigned in the city in the middle of the 
 fifteenth century built the first grand 
 barge of the municipality, and went to 
 Westminster in it in 1453 or 1454. The 
 liveried companies followed his example, 
 
and built magnificent vessels to attend 
 their chief magistrate on these occasions, 
 and for many years the watermen figured 
 as a part of the Lord Mayor s Show, the 
 Doggett heroes always wearing the tro 
 phies of their previous victories. Proud 
 Anne Bullen went in state, by water, from 
 Greenwich to the Tower before her cor 
 onation ; and poor Anne Bullen went 
 back to the Tower by the same silent 
 highway to have her head cut off. Queen 
 Elizabeth used to sail up and down the 
 Thames in very grand style during her 
 lifetime ; and after her death, her body 
 was brought with great pomp, by water, 
 from Richmond to Whitehall, where at 
 every stroke the oars did tears let fall, 
 and fish under water, according to a con 
 temporary poetical eulogy, wept out their 
 eyes of pearl, and swum [stc] blind after. 
 Her present Majesty is supposed to pos 
 sess a state barge, although she has not 
 used it since she went, by water, in 1849, 
 to open the New Coal Exchanges in 
 Lower Thames Street. The last great 
 River Pageant likely to live in history was 
 the public funeral of Nelson, when the hero 
 
was carried from Greenwich to White 
 hall Stairs on his way to his last resting- 
 place in the crypt of St. Paul s. 
 
 The Annual Regatta at Henley was 
 not instituted until 1839; and the first 
 idea of a regatta in England is said to 
 have been stimulated by Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu s descriptions of a fete- 
 day on the Grand Canal in Venice ; and 
 on the 23d of June, 1775, according to the 
 London press of the period, the " smart" 
 set appeared on the Thames in its best 
 raiment and its finest company manners. 
 The programme was submitted to the 
 public a month before the event; and 
 early in the afternoon the river from 
 Millbank to London Bridge was crowded 
 with pleasure boats of all sizes and of 
 every description, and grand stands and 
 small stands, gayly decorated with bunt 
 ing, were erected wherever a view of the 
 stream could be obtained. Ladies and 
 gentlemen were asked to arrange their 
 own parties, and all the City Companies 
 loaned their barges for the occasion. 
 The excitement was great, and two hun 
 dred thousand persons are estimated to 
 
have been on the water at one time. The 
 avenue to Westminster Bridge was cov 
 ered with booths, and with refreshment 
 and gaming tables ; constables guard 
 ed every approach to the river, and are 
 said to have charged every individual 
 who passed sums ranging from a penny 
 to half a crown, according to the rank 
 and the appearance of the passer; while 
 half a guinea is known to have been paid, 
 more than once, for the simple right to 
 stand on a coal-barge. The rowers were 
 dressed in red, white, and blue uniforms, 
 the ladies were requested to appear in 
 white gowns, and the gentlemen in frock 
 coats, although without restrictions as to 
 color. A salute of twenty-one guns an 
 nounced the arrival of the Lord Mayor 
 and the start of the procession, when they 
 all proceeded to Ranelagh in what the spe 
 cial correspondents called a "picturesque 
 irregularity." Supper and dancing fol 
 lowed in a temporary building erected for 
 the purpose ; the festivities did not break 
 up until morning; many boats were over 
 turned on the way home, and seven per 
 sons were drowned. It was a wild night ! 
 
VI 
 
 TRANSPORTATION AND ITS INCEPTION 
 
 "I ll put a girdle roundabout the earth in forty minutes." 
 Midsummer-Nighfs Dream, Act II., Scene II. 
 
 |HE first transport of which we 
 have any record was called 
 the Ark. It was command 
 ed by Noah, our common 
 ancestor; it was laden with 
 live-stock ; it carried a limited number 
 of saloon passengers ; and it made a very 
 memorable and important voyage, land 
 ing on Ararat some thousand or fifteen 
 hundred years after the Creation of the 
 World, and materially affecting our en 
 tire commercial system. 
 
 An ark, literally, is a chest, a box, a 
 coffer, a bin, a hutch, or other close re 
 ceptacle. And Noah s Ark, according 
 to Old Testament history, was a build 
 ing of gopher-wood covered with pitch. 
 
What kind of wood was the gopher- wood 
 the authorities have never determined. 
 It is mentioned but once in the Bible 
 Genesis vi. 14 and whether it was cy 
 press, or pine, or some other wood, no 
 man at this time can tell. We only know 
 that this gopher-wood Ark was three 
 hundred cubits long, fifty cubits broad, 
 and thirty cubits high ; and we do not 
 know what was the extent of a cubit. 
 The cubit is the fore-arm ; and a cubit 
 measure is supposed to mean the distance 
 between the elbow and the end of the 
 thumb-nail, or the end of the fore-finger. 
 The Hebraic cubit is estimated variously 
 at from nineteen to twenty-six inches. 
 Whatever its size, the Ark could not 
 have been what we now consider an un 
 commonly large boat, and the elephants 
 and the giraffes who were among its liv 
 ing freight must have found themselves, 
 sometimes, in comparative close quar 
 ters. According to tradition, the Ark 
 was an oblong floating house, with a door 
 in the side and a window in the roof ; and 
 according to the first book of Moses, 
 called Genesis, it was one hundred and 
 
twenty years in building. It contained 
 eight persons, and of all "clean " animals 
 seven pairs, and of all " unclean " animals 
 one pair, and of birds seven pairs of each 
 sort. 
 
 The early illuminators of the Sacred 
 Scriptures have given us quaint illustra 
 tions of the Ark, based upon a composite 
 notion of the ships of their own day and 
 the style of ship they fancied the Ark 
 might have been. The Ark goes back 
 very nearly to the beginning of history, 
 for Noah, its master, was the son of La- 
 mech, who is supposed to have been 
 about fifty years old when Adam died, 
 and he was the grandson of Methuselah, 
 who for two hundred years was a con 
 temporary of Adam. That Noah, there 
 fore, might have known Adam is not at 
 all improbable. Noah was five centuries 
 old when Shem, Ham, and Japheth were 
 born ; and when the Ark was completed 
 and the Deluge occurred, Noah, accord 
 ing to the old-fashioned Dictionary of 
 Dates, must have been in the seven or 
 eight hundredth year of his age. The 
 voyage of the Ark lasted one hundred 
 
and fifty days, but another six months 
 or more elapsed before the disembarka 
 tion took place and before the first Pil 
 grims landed on the original Plyrqouth 
 Rock. 
 
 Noah s Ark, except for the fact that it 
 floated, could hardly be considered a 
 ship ; for there is no record of its having 
 any keel, any stem or stern, any rudder, 
 any mast, any sail, any oar, any anchor, 
 any cable ; it was not intended or fitted 
 up for any particular destination, nor was 
 it built or designed to buffet strong seas 
 or to meet with heavy weather. 
 
 The invention of the art of ship-build 
 ing, Noah s Ark being accepted as mere 
 ly a floating house, is attributed by some 
 authorities to the Egyptians, the first 
 ship brought from Egypt into Greece 
 arriving, as is claimed, in the year 1485 
 B.C. ; but navigation, according to other 
 authorities, owes its origin to the early 
 Phoenicians, and ships are mentioned by 
 Moses, Job, and Balaam. Necho, or Neku, 
 who reigned in Egypt between 616 and 
 600 B.C., began, according to Herodotus, 
 to dig a canal which was to connect the 
 
Nile with the Red Sea; but he was ad 
 monished by an oracle to give the under 
 taking up, after a hundred and twenty 
 thousand men had perished in the work, 
 and he sent certain vessels, manned by 
 Phoenicians, to circumnavigate Africa and 
 to reach the Red Sea in a more round 
 about way. This they accomplished in 
 the course of three years. 
 
 The general system of navigation in 
 ancient days, we are told, whether the 
 vessel was impelled by oars or by sails, 
 was to keep close to the shore, and never to 
 venture into the open sea, except in order 
 to reach an island or to cross a channel of 
 moderate width. And all progress was 
 almost universally suspended at nights 
 and during the winter months. The or 
 dinary rate of a day s sail, exclusive of 
 the nights, was about thirty-five miles, 
 and at every interval of that length the 
 vessel put into land. 
 
 The invention and first use of the mar 
 iner s compass is shrouded in mystery. 
 It has been ascribed to an Italian of the 
 early days of the Fourteenth Century; 
 but it is believed to have been known to 
 
57 
 
 the Chinese who would seem to have 
 known everything and before the be 
 ginning of the Christian Era. One of 
 the earliest descriptions of the compass 
 is in the work of Guyot de Provins. " The 
 mariners," he said, in 1205, "sail by a 
 fixed star, and they have a contrivance 
 which never deceives them, through the 
 qualities of the magnet. They have an 
 ugly brown stone which attracts iron ; 
 they mark the exact quarter to which the 
 needle points which they have rubbed on 
 to this stone and afterwards stuck into a 
 straw. They merely put it in water, in 
 which the straw causes it to swim ; then 
 the point turns directly towards the star 
 with such certainty that it will never fail, 
 and no mariner will have any doubt 
 of it. When the sea is dark and foggy, 
 that neither star or moon can be seen, 
 they place a lighted candle beside the 
 needle, and have no fear of losing their 
 way ; the needle points direct to the star, 
 and the mariners know the right way to 
 take." 
 
 Robert Fulton started his steamboat on 
 the Hudson in 1807, and Henry Bell per- 
 
formed the same feat on the Clyde in 
 1812; nevertheless paddle-wheeled boats 
 are believed to have been propelled by 
 steam twenty years earlier. Fulton made 
 his first voyage in the Clermont in thirty- 
 three hours from New York to Albany. 
 Mr. Bell s Comet ran between Glasgow 
 and Greenock, and made the single jour 
 ney in a day. 
 
 The first steamship to cross the Atlan 
 tic was the Savannah, built and equipped 
 in New York, from which port she sailed 
 for Liverpool on the i$th of July, 1819, 
 carrying twenty-six days later news to 
 England. 
 
 The ox and the ass as beasts of burden 
 date back to the days of Abraham, but 
 the horse in Biblical times figures only in 
 connection with operations of war. And 
 Pharaoh entreated Abram well, for Sarah, 
 his wife s sake ; and he had sheep, oxen, 
 and she-asses. And Abram rose up early 
 in the morning and saddled his ass, and 
 took two of his young men with him. 
 Colonel Dodge, in his Riders of Many 
 Lands, tells us that the horse was brought 
 into Egypt by the Shepherd Kings less 
 
59 
 
 than seventeen hundred years before the 
 dawn of the Christian Era, and that all 
 of Pharaoh s horses and his chariots and 
 his horsemen were drowned in the Red 
 Sea two centuries later. No horse is to 
 be seen depicted in the art of the earlier 
 monuments of the Egyptians. 
 
 The earliest wagon of which there is 
 any mention in the Bible was the vehicle 
 sent by Joseph to bring the little ones 
 and the wives and the father of his breth 
 ren into the land of Egypt, five or six 
 centuries after the voyage of the Ark. 
 Carts were sometimes used for the re 
 moval of the Ark of the Covenant and its 
 sacred utensils; and when the Philistines 
 sent this chest of shittim-wood back to 
 the Israelites they made a new cart, and 
 they tied two milch-kine to the cart, and 
 they laid the Ark of the Lord upon the 
 cart and drew it to the field of Joshua. 
 And he clave the wood of the cart, and 
 offered the kine a burnt-offering to the 
 Lord. The Israelites themselves usually 
 carried this ark upon two gold-covered 
 poles, the priests who bore it walking 
 always in advance of the hosts. 
 
6o 
 
 In Chaucer s day travel was universally 
 accomplished on foot or on horseback, and 
 the story of the famous ride to Canter 
 bury by Chaucer himself is still extant in 
 undented English. Ladies at that period 
 sat in pillions fixed to the horses, and 
 generally behind some relation or servi 
 tor. Elizabeth is said to have gone to 
 open her fifth Parliament in a sort of cart 
 without springs, the body resting solidly 
 on the axle ; which must have been a 
 most uncomfortable journey, in view of 
 the then wretched state of the streets and 
 the highways. It was not until the end of 
 the sixteenth century, and even then very 
 rarely, that wagons were used as public 
 conveyances. But by the middle of the 
 seventeenth century strings of " stage- 
 wagons" travelled regularly between Lon 
 don and Liverpool and between London 
 and the North. The occasional stage 
 coach appeared a few years earlier, and 
 added greatly to the public comfort and 
 convenience. It ran only on the better 
 roads, and only in summer-time when the 
 roads were passable. In winter it was 
 laid up, like the canal-boat of cold coun- 
 
6 1 
 
 tries. One of the earliest announcements 
 of this mode of transportation is pre 
 served by Robert Chambers, and thus it 
 reads : " Whoever is desirous of going 
 between London and York, or York and 
 London, let them [sic\ repair to the Black 
 Swan in Holborn, or the Black Swan in 
 Coney Street, York, where they will be 
 conveyed in a stage-coach which starts (if 
 God permits) every Thursday at five in 
 the morning." 
 
 The stage-coach, like every innovation, 
 had its enemies, and we find it denounced 
 as " the greatest evil that has happened 
 of late years to the kingdom, mischievous 
 to trade, and destructive to the public 
 health " ; and furthermore we are told 
 that "those who travel in these coaches 
 contract an idle habit of body, become 
 weary and listless when they ride a few 
 miles, and are then unable or unwilling to 
 travel on horseback, and not able to en 
 dure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in 
 the field." In 1700 York was a week s 
 journey from the Metropolis, and even 
 fifty years later a fortnight was consumed 
 in going from London to Edinburgh, the 
 
coaches starting, God willing, once a 
 month. The first coach between Edin 
 burgh and Glasgow, in 1749, accomplished 
 the distance in forty-four hours ; and an 
 other vehicle was called " The Flyer " be 
 cause it landed the Glasgow man in Edin 
 burgh, and vice versa, in a day and a half ! 
 The earliest mail-coach started from Lon 
 don for Bristol on the 8th of August, 
 1784, at eight in the morning, reaching its 
 destination at eleven at night. And it 
 met with bitter opposition from the pos 
 tal authorities when its employment was 
 first suggested. 
 
 The hackney-coach was as unpopular 
 in the beginning of its career as anything 
 that ever went on wheels. One " Gossip 
 Garrard," writing from London in 1639, 
 speaks of it as being a new thing ; and in 
 connection with it he mentions a certain 
 " Captain Baily, who hath been a sea- 
 captain, but now lives on the land, where 
 he tries experiments. He hath erected, 
 according to his ability, some four hack 
 ney-coaches, put his men in a livery, and 
 appointed them to stand at the May-pole, 
 in the Strand, giving them instructions 
 
at what rate to carry men into several 
 parts of the town, where all day they may 
 be had. Other hackney-men," he adds, 
 "seeing this way, flocked to the same 
 place and performed their journey at the 
 same rate, so that sometimes there is 
 twenty of them together, which disperse 
 up and down !" The good citizen shop 
 keepers of London complained bitterly 
 that they were ruined by the hackneys, 
 their customers being whisked past their 
 establishments in a hurry, instead of be 
 ing tempted, as they walked, to go in and 
 buy the goods displayed in the windows. 
 Taylor, the Water-Poet, a waterman by 
 profession, found his trade ruined also, 
 and wrote an invective against the hack 
 ney-coaches, saying, among other things, 
 that a man can neither sleep, speak, hear, 
 write, nor eat his dinner for the confused 
 noise of them. And he continued that 
 " a coach, like a heathen, a pagan, an in 
 fidel, or an atheist, observes neither Sab 
 bath nor holiday, time nor season, robust- 
 iously breaking through the toil or net 
 of divine or human law, order, and au 
 thority. . . . The coach is not capable of 
 
6 4 
 
 hearing what the preacher saith, nor will it 
 suffer men or women to hear, for it makes 
 such a hideous rumbling in the streets, 
 by many church doors, that people s ears 
 are stopped by the noise. . . . And by 
 this means souls are robbed and starved 
 of their heavenly manna." 
 
 An old print of the time of the First 
 Charles shows the driver sitting on a sort 
 of chair in front of his vehicle ; while in the 
 succeeding reign the driver is seen upon 
 his horse itself, in true postilion style. 
 
 John Evelyn, writing from Naples in 
 1645, said : " The streets are full of gallants 
 on horseback, in coaches and sedans"; 
 and he added that the sedans " were 
 brought hence first into England by Sir 
 Sanders Duncomb." The name sedan 
 is supposed to be derived from Sedan, a 
 town in France. These conveyances were 
 used regularly in Great Britain after the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, and 
 their introduction was very nearly con 
 temporary with that of the hackney- 
 coach. There is a tradition that the 
 original British sedan was the property 
 of the favorite, Buckingham, who died in 
 
1628, and who greatly disgusted the peo 
 ple because "he was making beasts of 
 burden of his fellow-creatures." Sedans 
 for many years were more popular in the 
 capitals of Europe than carriages, espe 
 cially in Edinburgh, where the narrow 
 streets and steep hills made them con 
 venient and comfortable. The sedan was 
 usually " stabled " in the lobby of the 
 town mansion, and, being graceful in 
 shape and richly decorated, it was made 
 ornamental as well as useful. As Mr. 
 Dobson puts it so charmingly, it has 
 waited at portals where Garrick has 
 played, it has waited at Heidegger s 
 Grand Masquerade. Oh, the scandals 
 it knows ; oh, the tales it could tell, 
 of Drum and Ridotto, of Rake and of 
 Belle ! And now furbished up, and de 
 spatched with great care, it finds its last 
 resting-place in a Fine Art Museum, this 
 old sedan chair ! 
 
 The omnibus in Paris dates back to the 
 reign of Louis XIV., who, by a royal de 
 cree in 1662, established a line of public 
 coaches, at a fare of five cents, to run at 
 fixed hours, full or empty, from certain 
 s 
 
66 
 
 extreme ends of the town. The first 
 buses, as they started from the Luxem 
 bourg or the Porte St. Antoine, were met 
 with hisses and stones ; but for a time 
 when they were the mode, all Paris was 
 mad to use them. After a while the 
 fashion changed, neither the rich nor the 
 poor would patronize them, and they were 
 not seen in Paris until a century and a half 
 later. They reappeared in the French cap 
 ital in 1827, and they were found of great 
 benefit in building barricades in the 
 troubles of July, 1830. The first London 
 omnibus ran from the Bank of England 
 to the Yorkshire Stingo, in the New 
 Road, on the 4th July, 1829. The fare was 
 a shilling for the whole journey, sixpence 
 for the half journey ; and the passengers, 
 all of them in the inside, were furnished 
 with periodicals to read on the way ! 
 
 Railroads did not come into existence, 
 and then only in a very primitive form, 
 and propelled by horse or man power, 
 until the middle of the seventeenth cen 
 tury. In the Life of Lord-Keeper North 
 they were thus described in 1676: "The 
 manner of the carriage is by laying rails 
 
of timber from the colliery to the river, 
 exactly straight and parallel ; and bulky 
 carts are made with four rollers fitting 
 those rails, whereby the carriage is so easy 
 that one horse can draw four or five chal 
 drons of coals, and is an immense benefit 
 to the coal merchants." 
 
 In the Life of George Stephenson we 
 read that " in 1800 Mr. Benjamin Outram, 
 of Little Eaton, in Derbyshire, used stone 
 props instead of timber for supporting the 
 ends and the joinings of the rails. As 
 this plan was pretty generally adopted, 
 the roads became known as Outram 
 roads, and subsequently, for brevity s 
 sake, tram-roads. " A correspondent of 
 Notes and Queries, however, derives the 
 word tram from the Latin "frames, an 
 overth wart or crossway," and believes that 
 we get our familiar word tramp from the 
 same root. And he adds that tramways 
 were used in Derbyshire long before 
 Outram s day ; one of planks and log 
 sleepers having been laid between Ship 
 ley s coal-pit and the wharf near New- 
 mansleys, a distance of about a mile and 
 a half. Another Querist asks if the word 
 
68 
 
 is not of Scandinavian origin, tromm in 
 Swedish dialects meaning a summer 
 sledge. Brockett, in his Glossary of 
 North Country Words (1825), defines tram 
 as "a small carriage on four wheels, so 
 distinguished from a sledge; the word is 
 Gothic." And tram is an ancient Scotti 
 cism still in use, and meaning the shafts 
 of a cart or a barrow. 
 
 The first experiment with a locomotive 
 steam-engine is said to have been made 
 in Wales in 1804. The machine suc 
 ceeded in drawing several wagons on a 
 tramway at the rate of about five miles 
 an hour. It does not seem to have been 
 employed to do regular work, and after a 
 few trials it was abandoned. An im 
 proved locomotive engine, constructed by 
 George Stephenson, began its career in 
 1814, and was considered a great success. 
 In 1825 the Stockton and Darlington 
 Railway was opened for traffic, and it is 
 claimed that this is the first public high 
 way on which locomotive engines were 
 exclusively employed. The satisfaction 
 it gave led to the construction of the 
 Liverpool and Manchester line, opened 
 
in 1830, on September I5th, when Mr. 
 Huskisson, in the presence of the Duke 
 of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and other 
 distinguished persons, was crushed to 
 death under the wheels ; an evil omen for 
 the beginning of railways. 
 
 The first passenger - carriage on the 
 Stockton and Darlington Line was the 
 body of an old stage-coach fixed to a rail 
 way truck. The majority of the travellers 
 on the opening day were forced to occupy 
 empty coal-wagons. For some years lug 
 gage was placed on the top of the coaches 
 and left to take care of itself. The guards 
 sat in the same airy and exposed position, 
 and the trains were started by a bugle, 
 on which the tune " I d be a butterfly " was 
 played, probably as addressed to the 
 guards and the luggage. 
 
 Railway tickets originally were made of 
 paper, and were somewhat in the form of 
 way-bills. Their evolution in different 
 countries and at different times has been 
 marked and great ; and a collection of 
 the many varieties of them would form an 
 interesting hobby to those who have no 
 more postage-stamps to gather. 
 
VII 
 
 TOBACCO, AND THE BEGINNINGS 
 THEREOF 
 
 " Thus may we gather honey from the weed, 
 And make a moral of the devil himself." 
 
 Henry V., Act IV., Scene I. 
 
 jOBACCO and Golf are the 
 only topics, in the whole his 
 tory of things, upon which 
 Shakspere does not seem to 
 have touched, though men 
 smoked in Shakspere s day, and kings 
 uttered Counterblasts against Tobacco in 
 every form. Tobacco, however, was fa 
 miliar enough to Shakspere s contempo 
 raries. It is called "divine Tobacco" in 
 The Faerie Queene, and Ben Jonson, in 
 Every Man in his Humour, calls it "this 
 roguish Tobacco, good for nothing but to 
 choke a man, and fill him full of smoke 
 and embers." That Shakspere did smoke 
 
is fully believed by all the smoking com 
 mentators, who cannot account for his 
 strange silence on the subject, except on 
 the ground that smoking was not agree 
 able to the playwright s wife. Such things 
 have been ! 
 
 Edmund Malone quotes a number of 
 epigrams and satires which would seem 
 to prove that the play-goers of the time 
 of Shakspere were attended by pages, in 
 the theatres, who furnished them with 
 pipes and tobacco, and that they smoked 
 not only on the stage, which the specta 
 tors occupied as well as the players, but 
 in other parts of the house. And Paul 
 Heutzner, in his Journey into England, in 
 1598, says, "The English constantly smok 
 ing of Tobacco, and in this manner : they 
 have pipes on purpose, made of clay, into 
 the further end of which they put the 
 herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into 
 powder; and putting fire to it they draw 
 the smoke into their mouths, which they 
 puff out again through their nostrils, like 
 funnels, along with it plenty of phlegm, 
 and defluxion of the head." 
 
 In looking through the columns of 
 
Notes and Queries since its initial volume, 
 dated June i, 1850, we find many Notes 
 upon Tobacco ; and many pages scattered 
 through its forty-five years of existence 
 are devoted to the history of Tobacco, its 
 uses and abuses. Innumerable Queries 
 have inspired the information that John 
 Bell of Antermony, who was in China in 
 1721, reported the Chinese to have had 
 the use of Tobacco for many ages ; that 
 John Ledyard declared the Tartars to 
 have smoked from remote antiquity ; that 
 Crauford dates the introduction of To 
 bacco into Java in 1601, while admitting 
 that the natives had traditions of using it 
 long before ; that Savary states that the 
 Persians have used Tobacco for over four 
 hundred years; that Olearius found the 
 Russians in 1634 so addicted to Tobacco 
 that they would spend their money on it 
 rather than on bread ; that Eulia Effendi 
 found a Tobacco pipe, still in good pres 
 ervation, and retaining a smell of smoke, 
 imbedded in the walls of a Grecian edi 
 fice which was more ancient than the 
 birth of Mohammed 570 A.D. ; that Dr. 
 Yates saw amongst the paintings in a 
 
73 
 
 tomb in Thebes the representation of a 
 smok ing-party ; and that, to crown all, 
 there is an old tradition in the Greek 
 Church, said to be recorded in the works 
 of the early Fathers, that the Devil made 
 Noah drunk on Tobacco ! 
 
 Mohammed is said to have prophesied 
 as follows, " To the latter day there shall 
 be men who will bear the name of Moslem, 
 but will not be really such ; and they 
 shall smoke a certain weed which shall 
 be called Tobacco " [!]. This is in George 
 Sale s edition of the Koran (1734). But 
 whence Sale evolved the modern word 
 Tobacco nobody but Sale could have told, 
 and Sale neglected to explain. 
 
 On the other hand, those who do not 
 believe in the great antiquity of Tobacco 
 lay great stress upon the fact that Marco 
 Polo does not allude to it; and that it is 
 not referred to in The Arabian Nights. 
 
 An early writer speaks of Columbus as 
 "seeking the remotest land under the sun, 
 as flying to a New World like Noah s 
 dove, and bringing back in his mouth 
 not an olive branch, but a leaf of To 
 bacco !" 
 
According to Charlevoix, in his History 
 of St. Dominique, says the Century Dic 
 tionary, the pipe used by the Indians was 
 called Tobacco, and not the plant. Ac 
 cording to Las Casas, the Spaniards, in 
 the first voyage of Columbus, saw the 
 Indians in Cuba smoking dry herbs or 
 leaves, rolled up in tubes which they 
 called tobacos. According to Clavigero 
 the word was one of the names of the 
 plant used in Haiti. According to Bau- 
 hin(i596)and to Minsheu (1617), Tobacco 
 was so called from the Island of Tobago, 
 and according to other guessers it got its 
 name from a province of Yucatan. That 
 it came from Tobikhar, a division of 
 North American Indians who once lived 
 in what is now known as Southern Cali 
 fornia, no one but the present writer 
 seems to have conjectured. 
 
 The Century Dictionary says, also, that 
 it was unknown in the Old World before 
 the discovery of America ; that it was 
 introduced into Europe about 1559 by 
 a Spanish physician, who took a small 
 quantity into Spain and Portugal, whence 
 it found its way into Italy and France ; 
 
75 
 
 and that Sir Francis Drake first took it 
 to England about 1585. Another author 
 ity states, very positively, that Tobacco 
 was first introduced into Europe about 
 1560, by a Dutch merchant, who offered 
 the plant to John Nicot, French envoy- to 
 Portugal, that Nicot presented the plant 
 to the Grand Inquisitor, and, on his return 
 to France, to Queen Catherine de Medicis, 
 "who took an immediate fancy to it." 
 But he believes that Tobacco was smoked 
 in Persia and in China three or four cen 
 turies before the discovery of America. 
 
 John Stow, in his Chronicles of England, 
 states that " Tobacco was first brought 
 and made known by Sir John Hawkins, 
 about the year 1565, but not used by Eng 
 lishmen in many years after." Neverthe 
 less, he says elsewhere that " Sir Walter 
 Raleigh was the first that brought To 
 bacco to use, when all men wondered 
 what it meant." 
 
 Raleigh is generally accepted as the 
 Father of Smoking, and upon him men 
 who smoke do look to this day as their 
 patron saint. 
 
 Peace to his Ashes ! 
 
Caley, in his account of the last hours 
 of Sir Walter, proves very conclusively 
 that the smoking knight was not ashamed 
 of the weed, which he used if he did not 
 introduce. " He was very cheerful the 
 morning he died," says the historian ; 
 "ate his breakfast, and took Tobacco, 
 and made no more of death than if he 
 had been to take a journey." 
 
 Snuff has been traced to the Irish, al 
 though their cousins, the Scotch, have 
 always been considered the champions of 
 the nicotinians who take their Tobacco 
 by smelling it ; while the English seem 
 to have been the original chewers. In a 
 manuscript upon the Natural History of 
 Tobacco in the Harleian Collection is the 
 statement made that " the Irishmen do 
 most commonly powder their Tobacco, 
 and snuff it up their nostrils, which some 
 of our Englishmen do, who often chew 
 and swallow it." The date of this docu 
 ment, unfortunately, I do not know. The 
 pipe, it is asserted, came from the Car- 
 ibbee Islands, and it was first intro 
 duced into Europe during the last quar 
 ter of the sixteenth century. That it is 
 
77 
 
 reputed to have given its name to the 
 weed it contained has been explained 
 above. 
 
 The title of a poem upon Tobacco by 
 one John Sylvester, Gent., who flourished 
 in England during the reign of Elizabeth, 
 is worth quoting in full ; and nothing but 
 the title is needed to show the nature of 
 the poem. Here it is: Tobacco battered, 
 and the Pipe shattered about their Ears 
 that idly idolize so loathsome a Vanity, by 
 a Volley of holy Shot thundered from Mount 
 Helicon. 
 
 James Eccleston, in An Introduction to 
 English Antiquities (1847), makes the fol 
 lowing startling and shocking statement, 
 which does not seem to be verified by any 
 statement made by anybody else. Speak 
 ing of English ladies of quality during the 
 reign of Elizabeth, the antiquary says : 
 "It is with regret we add that their teeth 
 at this time were generally black and 
 rotten, a fact which foreigners attributed 
 to their inordinate love for sugar, but 
 which may, perhaps, be quite as reason 
 ably ascribed to their frequent habit of 
 taking the nicotian weed to excess." Al- 
 
though Stow calls Tobacco " that stink 
 ing weed which was commonly used by 
 most men and many women," most of the 
 antiquaries and many of the historians 
 express doubts concerning Mr. Eccle- 
 ston s charge, and on two grounds. First, 
 that Tobacco strengthens rather than 
 weakens the teeth. Second, that the Vir 
 gin Queen herself was not fond of, or 
 given to, the use of Tobacco ; and that 
 ladies of quality the world over, and in 
 all ages, did, and do, as is done by the 
 Queen, no matter who she is, or who they 
 think she may be. 
 
 In King James s famous Counterblast 
 we are told among other things that the 
 use of Tobacco is a vile and stinking cus 
 tom, borrowed from the beastly, slavish 
 Indians. He denies that smoking purges 
 the head or the stomach ; and he declares 
 that many have smoked themselves to 
 death. He argues that to use this un 
 savory smoke is to be guilty of a worse 
 sin than drunkenness. He pleads the ex 
 pense : " some gentlemen bestowing three 
 or four hundred pounds a year upon this 
 precious stink ;" and he further Counter- 
 
blasts in this wise : " It is a custom both 
 fulsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, 
 harmful to the brain, dangerous to the 
 lungs, and in the black stinking fumes 
 thereof nearest resembling the horrible 
 Stigian smelles of the pit that is bottom 
 less !" 
 
 James I. and VI., in his right royal 
 Counterblast, was not the only potentate 
 who opposed the weed, for Pope Urban 
 VIII. (1623-1644) issued a bull against 
 Tobacco in churches ! 
 
 In a report of the Proceedings and De 
 bates in the House of Commons in 1621, 
 while James was still on the British 
 throne, we are told that Sir William 
 Stroud moved that " Tobacco be ban 
 ished wholly out of the kingdom, and 
 that it may not be brought in from any 
 port, nor used among us." While Sir 
 Guy Palmer argued that " if Tobacco be 
 not banished it will overthrow one hun 
 dred thousand men in England, for now 
 it is so common that he hath seen 
 ploughmen take it as they are at the 
 plough." 
 
 Men who smoked Tobacco were called 
 
8o 
 
 Tobacconists as well as those who sold 
 Tobacco, and when Burton in his Parlza- 
 mentary Diary stated that "Sir John Rey 
 nolds had numbered the House, and there 
 were at rising at least two hundred and 
 twenty present besides Tobacconists," he 
 evidently alluded to the members of the 
 Old House of Commons who were too 
 much absorbed in the weed to attend to 
 business of State. 
 
 One authority says that "at the last 
 Great Plague in London none that kept 
 Tobacconists shops had the Plague. It 
 is certain that smoking it was looked 
 upon as a most excellent preservative, in 
 so much that the children were obliged 
 to smoke. And I remember that I heard 
 Tom Rogers, who was yeoman -beadle, 
 say that when he was, that year when the 
 Plague raged, a school-boy at Eton, all 
 the boys at that school were obliged to 
 smoke in the school, and that he was 
 never whipped so much in his life as he 
 was one morning for not smoking." This, 
 of course, was before the invention of the 
 cigarette, which school - boys think is 
 "smoking"; and Head Masters in our 
 
days do not order smoking as a preven- 
 tative of plagues of any kind. 
 
 Numerous and voluminous and en 
 couraging are the statistical reports of 
 the longevity of smokers. Abrarn Favrol 
 died in Switzerland in 1796 with a pipe 
 in his mouth, and at the age of one hun 
 dred and four. In 1856 there died in 
 Yorkshire one Jane Garbutt, widow, in 
 her one hundred and tenth year, who de 
 clared solemnly that she " had smoked 
 very nigh " upon a century. In A Paper 
 of Tobacco we read that in Silesia there 
 was once "living an old man named 
 Henry Hertz, of the age of one hundred 
 and forty-two, who had been a Tobacco- 
 taker from his youth upwards, and still 
 continued to smoke a pipe or two every 
 day." In The Cigar and Smoker s Com 
 panion (London, 1845) we are told that 
 " Old Parr was such an inveterate smoker 
 that he is said to have even tanned his 
 skin by the absorption into his pores." 
 " Old " Parr was so called because he is 
 supposed to have died at the age of one 
 hundred and fifty-two. The only very 
 old person who is recorded as having 
 
died from the effects of Tobacco was Mrs. 
 Pheasy Molloy, who departed this life, 
 suddenly, in Derbyshire in 1854, at the 
 age of ninety-six, from excessive smoking 
 her clothes having caught fire from an 
 open grate while she was in the act of 
 lighting her pipe ! 
 
 Among the well-known smokers of To 
 bacco, whom Tobacco did not premature 
 ly kill, may be mentioned Thomas Hobbs, 
 who died at the age of ninety-two; Izaak 
 Walton, at ninety; Sir Isaac Newton, at 
 eighty-four; Dr. Samuel Parr, at seventy- 
 eight ; Thomas Carlyle, at eighty-six ; and 
 Lord Tennyson, at eighty-three. 
 
 Talfourd says that Charles Lamb 
 " loved smoking not wisely but too 
 well, for he had to be content with the 
 coarsest variety of the great herb. When 
 Dr. Parr, who took only the finest tobac 
 co, ... saw Lamb smoking the strongest 
 preparations of the weed, puffing out 
 smoke like some ferocious enchanter, he 
 gently laid down his pipe, and asked him 
 how he acquired his power of smoking 
 at such a rate. Lamb answered, I toiled 
 after it, Sir, as some men toil after 
 
virtue. " In the Memoirs of Dr. Parr 
 we are informed that "Tobacco calmed 
 his agitated spirits; it assisted his pri 
 vate ruminations; it was his helpmeet 
 in composition. Have we not seen him 
 darkening the air with its clouds when 
 his mind was laboring with thoughts? 
 His pipe was so necessary for his thought 
 that he always left the table for it, and 
 the house of the person he visited, if it 
 was not prepared." 
 
 It will be remembered, when the un 
 usually bad and unpopular man died in 
 the far West, some years ago, that there 
 was no friend to speak a word in his 
 praise, until one sympathetic bystander 
 thus sounded his requiem : " Well, he 
 was a good smoker !" And that was 
 felt to be enough. 
 
 In a pleasant paper in defence of the 
 pipe, Dr. William C. Prime says that " no 
 anti-tobacco man has yet invented a rea 
 son against smoking which is not equally 
 strong against ice-cream, water-ices, iced- 
 water, apple - pie, and doughnuts. The 
 doughnut is a good subject of compari 
 son ;" he adds, " the prevalence of dough- 
 
8 4 
 
 nut eating in the interior of New York 
 and in Northern New England is appall 
 ing. Medical science, which does not 
 agree about Tobacco, is generally down 
 on doughnuts. ... If up-country grave 
 stones told truth you would find ten 
 saying, Died of Doughnuts, where one 
 said, Died of Tobacco. " 
 
 To sum the whole matter up, Rogers, 
 in his Table Talk, quotes Porson as say 
 ing that " when smoking began to go out 
 of fashion, learning began to go out of 
 fashion too." Neither learning nor smok 
 ing are likely to go out of fashion in our 
 generation ; and Mr. John Fiske, in his 
 learned work on Alcohol and Tobacco, 
 proves very conclusively that the Coming 
 Man will Smoke. 
 
VIII 
 
 COFFEE IN ITS EARLY DAYS 
 
 We shall have all the world drink brown." 
 
 Measure for Measure, Act II., Scene II. 
 
 COFFEE and Tobacco, which 
 Mr. Theodore Child once 
 called " Paratriptics," there 
 by coining and circulating a 
 word which is not current 
 in any of the Dictionaries, are always 
 pleasantly associated, and are usually 
 considered as coeval in England. An 
 old Persian proverb says that " Coffee 
 without Tobacco is meat without salt," 
 but there seems to be little question that 
 our own ancestors smoked with their 
 beer before dinner, some years before 
 they indulged in their post-prandial Cof 
 fee and cigar. Nevertheless, when Coffee 
 came, it came to stay ; and in a measure 
 it revolutionized British social life, for 
 
86 
 
 the London Coffee-house is the father 
 of the London Club, and the London 
 Club is the father of all the clubs in the 
 world, from White s and Boodles to the 
 Aldine and The Players. 
 
 The earliest Coffee-house in London, 
 according to John Aubrey, was estab 
 lished in the middle of the seventeenth 
 century. In his MSS., in the Bodleian 
 Library, he wrote: "When Coffee first 
 came in he [Sir Henry Blount] was a 
 great upholder of it, and hath ever since 
 been a constant frequenter of Coffee 
 houses, especially Mr. Farre s at the Rain 
 bow, by Inner Temple Gate, and lately at 
 John s Coffee-house, in Fuller s Rents. 
 The first Coffee-house in London was in 
 St. Michael s Alley, in Cornhill, opposite 
 to the church, which was set up by one 
 Bowman (coachman to Mr. Hodges, a 
 Turkey Merchant, who putt. him up in it) 
 in or about the yeare 1652. Twas about 
 4 yeares before any other was sett up, 
 and that was by Mr. Farr. Jonathan 
 Paynter, over against to St. Michael s 
 Church, was the first apprentice to the 
 trade, viz., to Bowman." 
 
"7 
 
 According to Anderson s Chronological 
 History of Commerce, the first London 
 Coffee-house was not Bowman s, but "was 
 kept by one Pasqua, a Greek, who opened 
 an establishment in George Yard, Lom 
 bard Street," in the same year, 1652. Pas 
 qua was Pasqua Rosee, who this time, 
 according to Peter Cunningham, was the 
 only original coffee-seller. 
 
 In James Hatton s New View of Lon 
 don, 1708, we read: "I find it recorded 
 that one James Farr, a barber, who kept 
 the Coffee-house which is now the Rain 
 bow, by the Inner Temple Gate, was, in 
 the year 1657, prosecuted by inquest of 
 St. Dunstan s in the West, for making and 
 selling a sort of liquor called Coffee, as a 
 great nuisance and prejudice to the neigh 
 bourhood." On the other hand, John 
 Howell said, in 1659 : " This Coffee drink 
 hath caused a great sobriety among all 
 nations ; formerly apprentices, clerks, etc., 
 used to take their morning draughts in 
 ale, beer, or wine, which often made them 
 unfit for business. Now they play the 
 good fellows in this wakeful and civil 
 drink. The worthy gentleman, Sir James 
 
Muddiford, who introduced the practice 
 hereof first in London, deserves much re 
 spect of the whole nation." 
 
 The hand-bill setting forth " The Virtue 
 of the Coffee-drink, first publiquely made 
 and sold in England by Pasqua Rosee, 
 in St. Michael s Alley, Cornhill, at the 
 Sign of his own Head," is quoted by 
 Isaac D Israeli in the Curiosities of Liter 
 ature, and for many years thereafter Cof 
 fee and Coffee-houses, curiously enough, 
 played a most important part in British 
 literature itself. Macaulay tells us what 
 a force the Coffee-house had become in 
 the land during the latter part of the 
 seventeenth century, even a very power 
 ful political institution, at a period when 
 public meetings, harangues, resolutions, 
 and the rest of the machinery of popular 
 agitation had not come into fashion, and 
 when very few newspapers existed. Un 
 der these circumstances the Coffee-houses 
 were the chief organs through which the 
 public opinion of the metropolis vented 
 itself; and in 1675 a paternal, and not 
 very long-sighted, Government went so 
 far as to issue a proclamation for the 
 
shutting up and suppressing of all estab 
 lishments of that kind. The importers 
 and the retailers and the venders of the 
 cheering bean, however, petitioned for a 
 repeal ; and they were finally permitted 
 to sell Coffee to be drunk on the prem 
 ises, under an admonition that the pro 
 prietors should prevent all scandalous 
 papers, books, and libels from being read 
 aloud, and should hinder every person 
 from declaring, uttering, or divulging any 
 manner of false and scandalous reports 
 against Government or the ministers 
 thereof. This was in the days of the 
 Second Charles. 
 
 By the time Queen Anne came to the 
 throne the Coffee-house had become the 
 literary as well as the political centre of 
 the town, and here gathered the wits and 
 the players for many generations, to talk 
 art, archaeology, architecture, books, and 
 the drama. What once was Will s Coffee 
 house, on the corner of Bow Street and 
 Russell Street, is to the literary pilgrim 
 almost the most hallowed spot in the 
 world to-day. The author of " Alexan 
 der s Feast " made it the fashion ; Pope, 
 
Addison, Steele, and De Foe were among 
 its frequenters; Pepys dropped in one 
 night, and reports that " Dryden the poet 
 (I knew at Cambridge), and all the wits of 
 the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. 
 Hoole of our college, were there ; and had 
 I had time then, or could at other times, 
 it would be good coming thither, for there 
 I perceive is very witty and pleasant dis 
 course." How valuable was this conver 
 sation has been recorded by Prior, who 
 said : " Tis the advantage of our Coffee 
 houses that from their talk one may write 
 a very good polemic discourse, without 
 even troubling one s head with the books 
 of controversy." 
 
 When White s Chocolate-house in St. 
 James s Street became White s Club 
 house, and when similar associations of 
 a private character were established, the 
 Coffee-house proper lost its power and 
 influence, and by degrees nothing but its 
 name was left to it. There are still Cof 
 fee-houses in London, in which one is 
 served with every liquid but Coffee ; and 
 some of the original caravansaries, with 
 their original signs, still exist, as Dick s 
 
and the Rainbow, but all their original 
 simplicity and charm have been "re 
 stored " and redecorated out of all de 
 cency. 
 
 An oil-painting by Mr. Edgar Bundy, 
 an English artist, attracted no little at 
 tention in London not long ago. It rep 
 resented " The Coffee - house Orator " as 
 standing before the fireplace of the Chesh 
 ire Cheese in Wine-Office Court; but 
 the Cheshire Cheese was never a Cof 
 fee-house, and it only merits its present 
 popularity because its present proprietors 
 have had the gumption and the business 
 tact to leave it as it was. Nothing about 
 it is gaudy, new, or flippant ; the rooms 
 are small, the timbers are heavy, the floor 
 is carpetless, the guests are-boxed in high- 
 backed, straight-backed, stiff-backed set 
 tles ; everything is solemn and heavy 
 particularly the viands and the spirit of 
 Samuel Johnson is believed to haunt the 
 place : a spirit of wine, not a decoction of 
 Coffee. His chair is still shown to the 
 visitor, his portrait still adorns the walls, 
 his tobacco-box is still preserved, the 
 Johnson Club still holds here its meet- 
 
ings, and it is never mentioned in Bos- 
 well s Life, or in any of the letters or 
 talks of Johnson himself ! As he was in 
 every tavern in its neighborhood, so must 
 he have been here ; but it is rather re 
 markable that the only one of his resorts 
 which is held sacred now by his adorers 
 is the only one of which we have no rec 
 ord of his ever having entered. 
 
 Our English cousin, when he does ex 
 hibit reverence for his past, is apt to re 
 vere the wrong thing, and to jump at 
 false conclusions. The members of the 
 Garrick Club are fond of pointing out to 
 the enthusiastic Americans " Thackeray s 
 Corner " in the present club-house, where 
 he always sat when he entered its pre 
 cincts, notwithstanding the fact that he 
 never entered its precincts at all ; because 
 in Thackeray s day, and for some years 
 after Thackeray s day, the Garrick Club 
 occupied its original quarters in King 
 Street, Covent Garden, some little dis 
 tance away. A few facetious members 
 have set aside a certain modern but com 
 fortable arm-chair as " Hawthorne s " in 
 a certain corner of the reading-room of 
 
91 
 
 The Players. They are perfectly willing 
 to confess that Hawthorne died more 
 than a quarter of a century before The 
 Players was conceived, but they are not 
 willing that the Garrick should take any 
 advantage of them, even in anachro 
 nism. 
 
 Concerning the London Coffee-houses 
 of the past whole books might be writ 
 ten, and about them hovers more of the 
 delightful anecdotes of literature than an 
 ordinary library could contain. William 
 Collins strutted backwards and forwards 
 in the Bedford and Slaughter s ; Smollett 
 frequented the Cocoa Tree and the Brit 
 ish ; Steele and Franklin were familiar 
 figures in Don Saltero s ; Colley Gibber 
 was an habitue of Tom s ; and Charlotte 
 and Anne Bronte slept for several nights 
 in the Chapter, in Paternoster Row the 
 only women who were ever so distin 
 guished. Better than an unknown orator 
 in small-clothes, laying down what he sup 
 poses to be the law, in the main room of 
 the Cheshire Cheese, would be a picture 
 of these two shy, innocent country girls, 
 going in their ignorance for shelter to the 
 
Chapter because it was their father s stop 
 ping-place, and the only one they knew 
 in all London. Its frequenters were ex 
 clusively men, and generally churchmen, 
 and the paternal old head-waiter who re 
 ceived and cared for them there never 
 hinted bless his heart ! that they were 
 doing what no women had ever done 
 before. 
 
 This is a scene respectfully suggested 
 to the genre and historic painters of the 
 two continents on which English is spoken 
 and Jane Eyre is read. 
 
IX 
 
 A GAMMON OF BACON IN ELIZABETH S 
 REIGN 
 
 " I have a gammon of bacon and two races of ginger 
 to be delivered as far as Charing Cross." 
 
 Part I. Henry IV., Act II., Scene I. 
 
 HE lately printed statement 
 that Bacon was not only 
 the author of Shakspere s 
 plays, but a son of Queen 
 Elizabeth as well, recalls a 
 series of long -forgotten scandals con 
 cerning the Virgin Queen, which at one 
 time attracted no little attention in Eng 
 land. 
 
 In Burton s Parliamentary Diary, vol 
 ume iv., page 135, occurs the following: 
 " Osborne see his works [1673], page 
 442 says, Queen Elizabeth had a son 
 bred in the State of Venice, and a daugh 
 ter I know not where, with other strange 
 
tales that went on her I neglect to insert, 
 as fitter for a romance than to mingle 
 with so much truth and integrity as I 
 profess. " In a copy of this work, ac 
 cording to Notes and Queries, January 4, 
 1851, is a manuscript note, undated and 
 unsigned, but to this effect : " I have heard 
 it confidently asserted that Queen Eliza 
 beth was with child by the Earl of Essex, 
 and that she was delivered of a child at 
 Kenilworth Castle, which died soon after 
 its birth, was interred at Kenilworth, and 
 had a stone put over it, inscribed Silen- 
 tiumJ " 
 
 Osborne s Historical Memories of the 
 Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King 
 James was first published in 1658, half a 
 century after Elizabeth s death. Burton 
 was a member of the Parliaments of 
 Oliver and Richard Cromwell. 
 
 There was a current belief in Ireland 
 in the first part of the present century 
 that the family of Mapother, in Roscom- 
 mon, was descended from Queen Eliza 
 beth ; and there existed, we are told, 
 many other traditions totally at variance 
 with the ordinarily received opinion as 
 
to her inviolate chastity ; one being to 
 the effect that the Queen s son was sent 
 to Ireland and placed under the care of 
 the Earl of Ormonde, who was distantly 
 related to Elizabeth. 
 
 A writer in Household Words, volume 
 xvi., tells another and equally interesting 
 story. He says: "An entry in a manu 
 script at the Free School of Shrewsbury 
 speaks of a certain son of the Earl of 
 Leicester and Queen Elizabeth. . . . This 
 manuscript, which is well preserved and 
 partially illuminated, once belonged to a 
 Roman Catholic Vicar of Shrewsbury, 
 who, in 1555, was appointed to the vicar 
 age by Queen Mary. He afterward con 
 formed to the Established Church, and 
 held the living for sixty years. This 
 vicar, who was called Sir John Dycher, 
 may not have been friendly to the Protes 
 tant Queen, and the singular entry in his 
 hand in the margin of the book may have 
 been a piece of malice. It is, however, 
 remarkable that an attempt has been 
 made to efface the entry, but unsuccess 
 fully ; the first ink being the blackest, and 
 refusing to be empowered by that which 
 
substituted other words in hopes of mis 
 leading the reading. The entry was as 
 follows : Henry Roido Dudley Tuther 
 Plantagenet : Films, Q. E., reg. et Robt. 
 Comitis Leicester, This is written at the 
 top of the page, nearly at the beginning 
 of the book [an old Latin Bible], and at 
 the bottom there has evidently been 
 more, but a square piece has been cut 
 out of the leaf; therefore the secret is 
 effectually preserved. 
 
 " There is a tradition that such a person 
 age as this mysterious son was brought 
 up secretly at the Free School of Shrews 
 bury; but what became of him is not 
 known, nor is it easy to account for this 
 curious entry in the parish church-book 
 of Shrewsbury." 
 
 At a meeting of the British Society of 
 Antiquaries held in 1859, documents from 
 the Landsdowne MSS. were read which 
 contained among other things the depo 
 sition of two justices in Wiltshire "re 
 garding certain scandalous rumors touch 
 ing the Queen s majesty, circulated in or 
 about the fifth year of her reign, and 
 charging that the Queen had been gotten 
 
99 
 
 with child by the Lord Robert Dudley 
 afterward Earl of Leicester who had 
 consequently fled the realm." 
 
 In a note to Lingard s History of Eng 
 land is a long account of one Arthur Dud 
 ley who appeared in Madrid in the year 
 1586, and declared himself to be the son 
 of Leicester and the English Queen. The 
 story is that he was born at Hampton 
 Court, that he was intrusted to the care 
 of one Robert Sotheron, the servant of a 
 family in Evesham, that he was educated 
 in London and upon the Continent, that 
 his condition was very superior to that 
 of his supposed brothers and sisters, that 
 his reputed father, on his death-bed, con 
 fessed to him his true condition, that he 
 had a secret interview with Leicester, his 
 actual father, and that he was treated as 
 a person of distinction by Philip of Spain, 
 being " very solemnly warded and served 
 with an expense to the King of vi. crowns 
 [about two pounds sterling] a daye. He 
 was of xxvii. yeares of age or thereabout." 
 Lingard, it will be remembered, was a 
 priest of the Church of Rome, holding a 
 preferment in Lancashire, and he at one 
 
time refused a Cardinal s hat, offered him 
 by the Pope. He was a man of unblem 
 ished reputation for truth and honesty, 
 but he neither asserts nor denies the truth 
 of the claims of this Arthur Dudley. 
 
 It is but just to say that Whitaker, in 
 his vigorous Vindication of Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, presented many charges against 
 the private life and conduct of Elizabeth, 
 but did not allude to these stories of her 
 child or children ; and Thomas, Earl of 
 Ormonde, wrote in 1851 denying emphat 
 ically that the collection of family papers 
 in his possession contained anything bear 
 ing the slightest reference to the very 
 calumnious attack upon the character of 
 good Queen Bess. No doubt all these 
 were among the many tales which, accord 
 ing to Osborne, " may be found in the 
 black relations of the Jesuits and some 
 French and Spanish Pasquilers, who scru 
 pled at nothing that might tend to blacken 
 the reputation of Elizabeth," and who 
 even went so far as to say that Henry 
 VIII. was not only the husband but the 
 father of Anne Bullen. 
 
 A chivalrous writer in Eraser s Mag- 
 
aztne many years, -a#o ii&ced these, ; stk>/ 
 ries against Elizabeth to their original 
 sources, and proved, in what seems to 
 him to have been a conclusive way, that 
 they rested upon the authority of a count 
 ess, who, at least on one occasion, made 
 a public confession of lying ; of an am 
 bassador whose secretary ran away from 
 him that he might not be forced to lie ; 
 of a groom who was pilloried for ly 
 ing ; of another groom whose words were 
 so shocking that the magistrates were 
 ashamed to write them down ; of a 
 Scotch courtier who was, on the whole, 
 rather proud of his success in lying ; and 
 of two murderers ! And Mr. Froude sums 
 up the matter by saying : " Surrounded as 
 she [Elizabeth] was by a thousand malig 
 nant eyes, she could not have escaped 
 detection had she really committed her 
 self ; and that the evidence against her 
 has to be looked for in the polemical 
 pamphlets of theologians would alone 
 prove that the suspicion was without 
 ground." 
 
 Whether the Queen was guilty or not 
 guilty, it is not possible now to determine. 
 
But jn \:e\v of tecent ^ssertions, it seems 
 a little curious, to impartial jurors, that 
 neither Bacon nor Shakspere was be 
 lieved by her contemporaries to have 
 been Elizabeth s son. If the author of 
 Othello or The Merchant of Venice was 
 the boy bred in the State of Venice, the 
 authentic pictures of the Council Cham 
 ber of the Doges and of the Rialto Bridge 
 might be accounted for. If the creator 
 of Shakspere s Richard III. was an an 
 cestor of the Mapothers of Roscommon, 
 then "the bard of Ireland," who once 
 prophesied to the crooked -back King, 
 might have been drawn from real life. 
 If the maker of Much Ado About Nothing, 
 who quoted Don Pedro as calling Bene 
 dick "a Spaniard from the hip upward," 
 was the youth who appeared in Madrid 
 in 1586, when Shakspere was twenty-two, 
 and thirteen years before Henry V. was 
 written, we can well imagine the native 
 of Woolsey s famous pile as supposing 
 that he might have seen "the well-ap 
 pointed King at Hampton pier embark 
 his royalty." And if the mysterious pu 
 pil of Shrewsbury Free School invented 
 
103 
 
 Falstaff, it would have been very natural 
 for him to have made the fat knight fight 
 for a long hour, once, by Shrewsbury 
 clock ! 
 
 Queen Elizabeth was in the twenty- 
 seventh year of her age, and the second 
 of her reign, when Bacon was born, ac 
 cording to hitherto accepted data, in his 
 father s house near Charing Cross and in 
 the presence of his legitimate mother; 
 and she was four years older at the time 
 of the supposed birth of Shakspere, at 
 Stratford-upon-Avon. It is not impos 
 sible, therefore, that Bacon and Shak- 
 s-pere might have been half-brothers, 
 collaborating, in a fraternal way, for the 
 benefit of the younger of them, and prac 
 tising harmoniously at the same Bar- 
 Sinister in defence of their mutual and 
 maternal grandmamma, the second wife 
 of the eighth Henry of England. 
 
 It is only to be regretted that insur 
 mountable chronological discrepancies 
 forbid the hypothesis that Skakspere 
 might have been Bacon s father; for to 
 those of us who cling to the Shaksperean 
 theory there would be a little comfort 
 
io 4 
 
 in the feeling that even if Shakspere 
 was not the author of his own plays, he 
 was, at least, the author of their author s 
 being! 
 
ST. VALENTINES DAY IN DAYS GONE BY 
 
 " Good-morrow, tis Saint Valentine s day, 
 All in the morning betime; 
 And I a maid at your window, 
 To be your Valentine." 
 
 Hamlet, Act IV., Scene V. 
 
 XACTLY why St. Valentine 
 should have been elected 
 the patron saint of lovers 
 the world over has never 
 been fully determined. The 
 Feast of Valentine occurs at the begin 
 ning of a season of the year in which a 
 young man s fancy is supposed to turn to 
 thoughts of love, however, and it has been 
 conjectured, on that account, that the 
 Saint has been chosen as one to whom 
 lovers would naturally turn for help, pro 
 tection, and consolation. 
 
 Concerning St. Valentine himself very 
 little is known. He was a priest at Rome, 
 
who is supposed to have been martyred 
 under Claudius II. on the Hth February 
 in the year of our Lord 270 ; but there is 
 no record of his having been connected 
 in any way with the observances still 
 recognized in some parts of the world as 
 belonging peculiarly to him. The fate 
 of St. Valentine was neither sentimental 
 nor comic. He was first beaten to death 
 with clubs, and then his head was cut off. 
 All that was left of him was subsequently 
 buried in the Church of St. Praxedes in 
 Rome; and the well-known Roman gate 
 which is now called the Porta del Popolo 
 was once named Porta Valentini in mem 
 ory of him. 
 
 It is said that in ancient times a pecul 
 iar festival, called the Merd-giran, was 
 celebrated in February in Persia in honor 
 of an angel who was considered the guard 
 ian of the fair sex. The fair sex on this 
 occasion enjoyed the very singular privi 
 lege for Persia of absolute power. The 
 husbands obeyed all the commands of 
 their wives ; and the maidens, without of 
 fence to delicacy, were permitted to pay 
 their attentions to whom they pleased. 
 
io 7 
 
 The result was the announcement of 
 many engagements and the solemniza 
 tion of not a few marriages ; the Guar 
 dian Angel being supposed to shower un 
 usual favors upon all nuptial contracts 
 made and ratified at that particular time. 
 The Persians had no St. Valentine of 
 their own, but this was leap-year sim 
 plified, and perhaps intensified. Maidens 
 having but one day out of the three hun 
 dred and sixty-five in which to operate, 
 went, no doubt, more systematically to 
 work than if they had had a whole twelve 
 month at their command. 
 
 One ingenious writer endeavors to con 
 nect Valentines with Biblical history and 
 Biblical times, and quotes Esther ix. 19 
 as his authority. " Therefore the Jews 
 of the villages, that dwelt in the unwalled 
 towns, made the fourteenth day of the 
 month Adar a day of gladness and feast 
 ing, and a good day, and of sending por 
 tions to one another." He contends 
 that Adar corresponds to our February. 
 Other authorities, however, prove that 
 Adar is sometimes February, but that the 
 feast of Purim referred to in Esther is a 
 
io8 
 
 movable feast, and that it falls as often in 
 March or April as in the second month 
 of the year. 
 
 In Bailey s Dictionary, first published 
 in 1721, we find the following : " VALEN 
 TINES (in England). About this Time 
 of the year [middle of February] the 
 Birds choose their Mates, and probably 
 thence came the Custom of the Young 
 Men and Maidens choosing Valentines, 
 or special loving Friends, on that Day." 
 And again : " VALENTINES (in the Church 
 of Rome). Saints chosen on St. Valen 
 tine s Day as Patrons for the Year ensu 
 ing." 
 
 Francis Douce, a celebrated antiquary 
 of the end of the last century and be 
 ginning of this, gives, in his Illustrations 
 of Shakspere, first published in 1807, a 
 very lucid account of the origin of Val 
 entines. " It was the practice of ancient 
 Rome," he says, "during the greater part 
 of the month of February to celebrate 
 the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honor 
 of Pan and Juno, whence the latter deity 
 was named Februata, Februalis, and Feb- 
 rulla. On this occasion, amidst a variety 
 
log 
 
 of ceremonies, the names of young wom 
 en were put into a box, from which they 
 were drawn by the men as chance direct 
 ed. The pastors of the early Christian 
 Church, who by every possible means en 
 deavored to eradicate the vestiges of pa 
 gan superstitions, substituted in the pres 
 ent instance the names of particular 
 saints instead of those of the women ; 
 and as the festival of Lupercalia had 
 commenced about the middle of Feb 
 ruary, they appear to have chosen St. 
 Valentine s day for celebrating the new 
 feast. . . . And this," he adds, " is in part 
 the opinion of a learned and rational 
 compiler of The Lives of the Saints, 
 the Rev. Alban Butler." It seems that 
 the labels containing the names drawn 
 out of the box were worn conspicuously 
 on the lapels of the dress-togas of the 
 winners in ancient Rome, and that these 
 labels, by a course of obvious selection, 
 became the written and printed Valen 
 tines of later days. 
 
 St. Valentine s day is mentioned in the 
 works of Chaucer, Lydgate, Shakspere, 
 Drayton, and Donne, and it is said that 
 
the earliest existing examples of poetical 
 Valentines were written in the Tower of 
 London by Charles, Duke of Orleans, 
 who was taken prisoner at Agincourt 
 in 1415. These are preserved among the 
 treasured MSS. of the British Museum. 
 
 One Valentine, signed by John Birchall, 
 and dated 1684, is worth repeating here, 
 as showing what a serious, sanguinary 
 matter this John Birchall considered the 
 Valentine to be : 
 
 " These loving lines which I to you have sent, 
 In secrecy in my heart s blood are pent. 
 Ye pen I slipt, as I ye pen did make, 
 And freely bleeds, and will do for your sake." 
 
 John s case was evidently a bad one. 
 
 In the days of the Merry Monarch the 
 choice of a Valentine appears to have 
 been attended with serious and expensive 
 observances, as it is set down by the in 
 evitable and exceedingly valuable Mr. 
 Pepys, who makes many allusions to St. 
 Valentine s day and its customs. In 1667 
 he wrote : " I am also this year my wife s 
 Valentine, and it will cost me ^5 ; but 
 that I must have laid out if we had not 
 
been Valentines." Two days later, in his 
 ingenuous way, he exhibits his habits of 
 thrift : " I find that Mrs. Pierce s little girl 
 is my Valentine, she having drawn me, 
 which I was not sorry for, it easing me of 
 something more that I must have given 
 to others. But here do I first observe 
 the fashion of drawing mottoes as well 
 as names." From mottoes came natu 
 rally the bits of verse which enabled 
 some of us, two centuries or so after 
 Pepys s day, to put upon record the famil 
 iar and touching sentiment that, as the 
 rose is red and the violet is blue, so some 
 little girl of our acquaintance was as 
 sweet as sugar. 
 
 Valentines in Norwich, England, until a 
 few years ago, at least, were something 
 more than Valentines as we understand 
 them here ; and, as in Pepys s time, they 
 were something far more serious to the 
 sender. A writer in Notes and Queries, 
 March 9, 1850, tells us that "while in 
 that town, forty-five years since, billets 
 were sent by means of the post, yet at 
 the same time the custom consisted not 
 in the transmission of a missive overflow- 
 
ing with hearts and darts or poetical po 
 sies, but in something far more substan 
 tial, elegant, and costly to wit, a goodly 
 present of value, unrestricted in use or 
 expense. Though this custom," he adds, 
 " is openly adopted among relatives and 
 others whose friendship is reciprocated, 
 yet the secret mode of placing a friend 
 in possession of an offering is followed 
 largely and this, it is curious to remark, 
 not on the day of the Saint, when it 
 might be supposed that the appropriate 
 ness of the gift could be duly ratified, 
 the virtue of the season being in full 
 vigor, but on the eve of St. Valentine, 
 when it is fair to presume his charms are 
 not properly matured. The mode adopt 
 ed among all classes is that of placing 
 the present on the door-sill of the house 
 of the favored person, and intimating 
 what is done by a runaway knock or ring, 
 as the giver pleases. So universal is this 
 custom in this ancient city that it may 
 be stated with truth some thousands of 
 pounds are annually expended in the 
 purchase of Valentine presents." 
 
 Another correspondent, writing from 
 
Norwich a few years later, goes into fuller 
 details. " Inside the house," he says, 
 " all is on the qui vive, and the moment 
 the bell is heard, all the little folk (and 
 the old ones too, sometimes) rush to the 
 door, and seize the parcel, and scruti 
 nize the direction most anxiously, to see 
 whether it is for papa, or mamma, or for 
 one of the youngsters. The parcels con 
 tain presents of all descriptions, from the 
 most magnificent books or desks to little 
 unhappy squeaking dolls ; indeed, I have 
 known a great library easy-chair come in 
 this way. ... As I have stated, they are 
 all sent anonymously, or at most with 
 some attempts at poetry with them, but 
 aJLhave the universal G. M.V. or Good- 
 Marrow Valentine upon them. I have 
 only to add that this year [1854] the fes 
 tival has been kept more religiously than 
 ever." 
 
 This adds a new horror to the Greeks 
 and to those bearing gifts. Christmas 
 was once described by the present writer 
 as that particular season of the year in 
 which we spend the money we cannot 
 afford, for the purchase of things our 
 
friends do not want ; and if we are asked 
 to distribute serious and solid Valentine 
 offerings to those who are near and are 
 dear to us, where will the matter end ? 
 
 There is, or was, a Valentine supersti 
 tion among the peasants of Devonshire 
 to the effect that if one go to the porch 
 of a church, wait there until half -past 
 twelve o clock on the eve of St. Valen 
 tine s day with some hemp seed in one s 
 hand, and then proceed homeward, scat 
 tering the seed on each side, and repeat 
 ing the following lines, 
 
 " Hemp seed I sow, hemp seed I mow, 
 He [or she] that will my true-love be, 
 Come rake this hemp seed after me," 
 
 she or he, M or N, will be seen perform 
 ing the raking operation in a winding- 
 sheet. What is to be gained by this 
 cheerful procedure, or why one should 
 care to see one s true-love in a winding- 
 sheet on Valentine s eve, or any other eve, 
 is not explained. 
 
 Another ancient Valentine custom is 
 shown in a letter from a " Country Girl," 
 printed by Mr. Town, in the Connoisseur 
 
"5 
 
 for February 17, 1775. She says, "Last 
 Friday, Mr. Town, was Valentine s day, 
 and I ll tell you what I did the night be 
 fore. I got five bay leaves, and pinned 
 four of them to the four corners of my 
 pillow, and the fifth to the middle ; and 
 then if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty 
 [her maid] said we would be married be 
 fore the year was out. But to make it 
 more sure, I boiled an egg hard, and took 
 out the yolk, and filled it with salt, and 
 when I went to bed ate it, shell and all, 
 without speaking or drinking after it. 
 We also wrote our lovers names upon 
 bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay 
 and put them into water; and the first 
 that rose up was to be our Valentine. 
 Would you think it? Mr. Blossom was 
 my man, and I lay abed and shut my 
 eyes all the morning, till he came to our 
 house ; for I would not have seen another 
 man before him for all the world !" 
 
 In this degenerate age of impaired di 
 gestions it is safe to say that the young 
 woman who would voluntarily retire on 
 a supper of egg-shells and salt would 
 hardly care to marry the individual likely 
 
u6 
 
 to come wooing to her in her subsequent 
 dreams. 
 
 A certain advertisement contained in 
 the Wooster (Ohio) Democrat of February 
 3, 1853, is here quoted in part, as a curi 
 osity of the literature of Valentines : " The 
 great increase in marriages throughout 
 Wayne County during the past year is 
 said to be occasioned by the superior ex 
 cellence of the Valentines sold by George 
 Howard. Indeed, so complete was his 
 success in this line that Cupid has again 
 commissioned him as the Great High 
 Priest of Love, Courtship, and Marriage, 
 and has supplied George with the most 
 complete and perfect assortment of Love s 
 Armor ever before offered to the citizens 
 of Wayne County. During the past year 
 the Blind God has centred his thoughts 
 on producing something in this line far 
 surpassing anything he has heretofore 
 issued. And it is with feelinks \sic\ of 
 the greatest joy that he is able to an 
 nounce that he has succeeded. . . . The 
 children on the house-top [a very dan 
 gerous place for the children to be] will 
 call to the passer-by, shouting, Howard s 
 
Valentines ! while the cry is echoed from 
 the ground, and swelling over hill and 
 vale, it reverberates the country through." 
 
 In another column of the same journal 
 is an editorial note to this effect: "Be 
 hold, St. Valentine s day is coming, and 
 all are seeking for messages to be de 
 spatched, under cover of this Saint, to 
 friend or foe. They are provided of all 
 kinds, styles, and varieties ready for use 
 the turtle-dove kind, with its -coo ! coo ! 
 the sensibly sentimental, the cutting and 
 severe, and, in short, everything that can 
 be required. Just call on George How 
 ard, and you can be suited to a T." 
 
 The Comic Valentine is of compara 
 tively recent date. It seems to have 
 sprung from the ashes of the sentimental 
 Valentine, and to have been regarded as 
 a justifiable method of anonymous letter- 
 writing, in which the sender was permit 
 ted to poke fun with impunity at his 
 neighbor s clothes, or habits of life, or 
 personal appearance, particularly the last. 
 One red-headed little boy, with a long 
 nose and what are called spindle-shanks, 
 with whom the present writer was once 
 
upon intimate terms, can remember to 
 this day his annual annoyance at being 
 told by means of highly colored, exagger 
 ated, penny lithographs, every I4th of 
 February, how thin were his legs, how 
 carroty were his locks, and how conspicu 
 ous and prominent was his organ of the 
 sense of smell. He generally knew, or con 
 jectured, who was the author of the ten 
 der missive of the turtle-dove kind, and 
 he always despatched a tender missive of 
 the coo ! coo ! sort to her ; but he rarely 
 discovered the senders of the Comic Val 
 entines. And in his inmost heart he 
 never felt that Comic Valentines were so 
 very comic, after all. 
 
XI 
 
 APRIL-FOOL S DAY, AND SOME OF ITS 
 ANCIENT TRADITIONS 
 
 "We make ourselves Fools, to disport ourselves." 
 Timon of Athens, Act I., Scene II. 
 
 PRIL-FOOLING is the most 
 asinine of all the perform 
 ances of silly man ; and its 
 prosperity lies in the con 
 duct of him who makes it, 
 never in the action of him who is made 
 its victim. It is said to be as ancient as 
 the hills before the Deluge, and to go 
 back even to Parnassus, when sportive 
 nymphs, though old as ages, were ever 
 young and gay. Its origin is one of the 
 most obscure of popular traditions, and 
 the antiquaries have never succeeded in 
 accounting for it in anything like a satis 
 factory way. Hone and Chambers con 
 tent themselves with the citation of ex- 
 
iamples of April-Fooling, but they do not 
 ( attempt to explain how the custom arose, 
 and very little information is to be gath 
 ered from other sources. 
 
 It is recorded in the mythologies, how 
 ever, that Proserpina was playing in the 
 Nysian meadows at the beginning of 
 April, and had succeeded in filling her 
 lap with wild daffodils, when Pluto picked 
 her up, daffodils and all, and transported 
 her to his own particular regions. Ceres, 
 her mother, heard the echo of her scream, 
 and immediately set out in search of her 
 a search which proved a Fool s errand ; 
 and those who have followed her during 
 all these ages, upon similar quests, are 
 said to be looking for the shadow of a 
 sound ! 
 
 Whitakers Almanack for 1870 quotes 
 the following extract from the Public 
 Advertiser of April 13, 1779: 
 
 " Humorous Jewish Origin of the Cus 
 tom of Making Fools on the First of April. 
 This is said to have begun from the mis 
 take of Noah in sending the dove out of 
 the Ark before the water had abated, on 
 the first day of the month among the He- 
 
brews which answers to the First of April 
 [with us] ; and it was thought proper, 
 whoever forgot so remarkable a circum 
 stance, to punish them by sending them 
 upon some sleeveless errand similar to 
 that ineffectual message upon which the 
 bird was sent by the patriarch. The cus 
 tom appears to be of great antiquity, and 
 to have been derived by the Romans from 
 some of the Eastern nations." 
 
 Another hypothesis, but not a very lu 
 cid one, is to the effect that the origin of 
 sending persons on Fools errands refers 
 to the mockery of the Messiah, about the 
 beginning of the month of April, as we 
 now count time. 
 
 A writer in Notes and Queries, some 
 twenty years ago, affirmed that the habit 
 originated in Whitby, where the patients 
 in the Insane Asylum had a holiday on 
 the ist of April, and the idiots who had 
 never been incarcerated found amuse 
 ment in sending them upon ridiculous 
 journeys. The ist of April throughout 
 all Britain in ancient times was observed 
 as a high and general festival, during 
 which unbounded hilarity reigned among 
 
all classes of persons ; and, according to 
 Mr. Maurice, of all the remarkable traits 
 of jocundity which were then observed 
 not the least remarkable or ludicrous is 
 that relic of pristine pleasantry the gen 
 eral practice of making April Fools. This 
 pristine pleasantry seems to have been 
 very general during the last century. 
 Swift in his Journal to Stella, March 31, 
 1713, tells how he and Dr. Arbuthnot 
 spent an amusing evening in " contriving 
 a lie for to-morrow," by which they sent 
 their servants to the Black Swan Inn, in 
 Holborn, to see the resurrected body of a 
 certain popular felon who was hanged a 
 few days before. And the Spectator tells 
 how " a neighbor of mine, who is a haber 
 dasher by trade, and a very shallow, con 
 ceited fellow, makes his boasts that for 
 these ten years successively he has not 
 made less than a hundred Fools. My 
 landlady had a falling out with him about 
 a fortnight ago for sending every one of 
 her children upon a sleeveless errand, as 
 she terms it. Her eldest son went to buy 
 a half-penny s worth of inkle at a shoe 
 maker s ; the eldest daughter was de- 
 
spatched half a mile to see a monster; 
 and, in short, the whole family of inno 
 cent children made April Fools. Nay, 
 my landlady herself did not escape 
 him." 
 
 It is a little consoling, in view of all 
 this jocularity, to read that a French 
 lady, who stole a watch from a friend s 
 house as an April joke, and who sent the 
 police all over the town to look for it, 
 still as an April joke, was committed to 
 prison until the next ist of April an 
 April joke which she could hardly have 
 enjoyed herself. 
 
 The Fool s -day custom was by no 
 means confined to the English, or to the 
 English-speaking people, however. The 
 Romans had their Festum Stultorum ; the 
 Hindoos, on the Brahman festival of 
 spring, we are told, diverted themselves 
 and their friends by sending persons on 
 expeditions which were to end in disap 
 pointment, and to raise a laugh at the ex 
 pense of the messenger ; and a learned 
 Italian gentleman, whose work I cannot 
 find in this country, unfortunately, is 
 credited with having discovered April- 
 
Fooling in fourteen nationalities and four 
 teen languages. 
 
 Fools are not always such Fools as they 
 look. Samson made sport for the Philis 
 tines, David feigned himself foolish at the 
 court of Achish, and Patroclus and Ther- 
 sites, according to Shakspere, performed 
 the parts of mimics for the entertainment 
 of Achilles and Ajax. 
 
 A complete list of the Fools of history 
 would fill volumes of instructive reading- 
 matter ; and among these the Profes 
 sional Fools would be found to be the 
 wisest men. King s Jesters usually knew 
 more than the monarchs they were em 
 ployed to amuse, and, as Dumas has shown 
 us, Chicot was one of the most brilliant 
 and thoroughly sensible men in the court 
 of the Third Henry of France. 
 
 The Professional Fool is to be found 
 figuring in the annals of very early times. 
 Martial is said to have bought a Fool 
 once who had as much sense as other 
 people, upon discovering which the pur 
 chaser tried to get his money back ; and 
 it is asserted that slaves among the Ro 
 mans in Martial s day, and long before it, 
 
pretended to be simpletons in order to in 
 crease their own market value. 
 
 Montaigne quoted Seneca as writing 
 to Lucilius, "You know that Harpaste, 
 my wife s Fool, lives upon me as an 
 hereditary charge ; for as to my own 
 taste I have an aversion to these mon 
 sters ; and if I have a mind to laugh at a 
 Fool I need not seek him far I can 
 laugh at myself !" This particular Fool 
 of whom Seneca wrote was a lady s Fool, 
 and, it would seem, a woman; and there 
 are other instances of her sex playing the 
 Fool for profit, and playing it well. Mile. 
 Levin was the Fool of the Queen of Na 
 varre, La Jardiniere and Jacquette were 
 the Fools of Catherine de Medicis Mary 
 Stuart appears to have carried the former 
 with her to Scotland Mathurine was the 
 Court Fool to Henry IV. of France, and 
 "Jane the Foole" who once had her 
 " hedde shaved " was in the service of 
 the Princess, afterwards Queen, Mary of 
 England. This Jane the Fool figures in 
 Ainsworth s Tower of London. 
 
 Dr. Doran, in a supplementary chapter 
 to The History of Court Fools, says that 
 
126 
 
 the female jester not only had precedence 
 of her brother in the art, in point of date 
 of origin, but that she still survives him 
 in the person of the lady who is Court 
 Fool to the Sultan of Turkey ; and he 
 makes the startling suggestion that Will 
 Shakspere might once have been engaged 
 in this business. Nothing is known of the 
 life of Shakspere between 1585 and 1589, 
 and no one has discovered the identity of 
 "Will, my Lord of Leicester s jesting 
 player," who carried a letter from Sir 
 Philip Sidney, in Utrecht, toWalsingham, 
 in London, in 1586. The Immortal as a 
 Court Fool would make even April-Fool 
 ing respectable. 
 
 The world has been full of Fools from 
 April to March since the beginning of 
 history. Adam was the first Fool, and 
 every descendant of Adam on the earth 
 to-day is the last. There are innocent* 
 Fools and malicious Fools, damned Fools, 
 and simple, plain, ordinary, every -day, 
 common Fools. \_Given any two persons, 
 in any community, and in any walk of 
 life, and one of them will prove to be a 
 Fool usually both Q The cleverest man 
 
I2 7 
 
 makes a Fool of himself about once a 
 day ; but he is more clever than other 
 Fools because, like Seneca, he is wise 
 enough to realize what a Fool he is. And 
 the Fool who is Fool enough not to 
 know that he is a Fool, is the worst Fool 
 of all! 
 
XII 
 
 GOOD-FRIDAY, AND SOME OF ITS AN 
 CIENT CUSTOMS AND ANCIENT 
 SUPERSTITIONS 
 
 " Evermore cross d and cross d; nothing but cross d i" 
 Taming of the Shrew, Act IV., Scene V. 
 
 |HE Hot Cross-bun of Good- 
 Friday is the most popular 
 and the most enduring of 
 the symbols of old times 
 and of old religions which 
 the Reformation left in England, and 
 which Puritanism preserved in the New 
 World. In Catholic days, in the mother 
 country, the Hot Cross-bun was a time- 
 honored indulgence after the rigorous 
 fast which was universally enjoined ; al 
 though it seems to have been a local 
 rather than a national form of diet. In 
 some counties it appears to have been un 
 known, while in others it was as inevitable 
 
I2 9 
 
 as was the plum-pudding at Christmas. 
 Brand in his English Antiquities has 
 shown that Hot Cross-buns were made in 
 Britain long before the Romish priest or 
 the mass -book appeared there. They 
 were then eaten in honor of Diana at her 
 annual festival, held soon after the vernal 
 equinox; and he infers that the outcast 
 priests of Baal, who accompanied the 
 Phoenicians into England, baked the orig 
 inal English Hot Cross -bun. It was 
 round and sweet, and it was marked with 
 a cross, dividing it into four equal parts, 
 to indicate the four quarters of the moon, 
 Diana being the Sweet Queen of the 
 Night ; or else it was stamped with cres 
 cents for the same reason ; and that these 
 crescents were crossed is not improbable. 
 Other authorities believe the Hot Cross- 
 bun to be based upon the ecclesiastical 
 consecrated loaves which were bestowed 
 by the Church of Rome as alms, or were 
 given to those who, for some reason, 
 could not receive the host. They were 
 made of the dough from which the host 
 itself was taken, and they were distrib 
 uted among the people by the priests 
 
1 3 o 
 
 after mass. Like the buns of the present 
 day, they bore the sign of the cross. 
 
 In the Museo Lapidario of the Vatican, 
 in Rome, is a tablet supposed to repre 
 sent the five barley loaves. TrTey are 
 round cakes marked with a cross. It has 
 been suggested that these loaves are 
 representative of a pagan practice that 
 of presenting cakes to Astarte, to whom, 
 as we are told by the Prophet Jeremiah, 
 the Jewish women offered cakes and 
 poured wine "When we burned incense 
 to the queen of heaven, and poured out 
 drink-offerings unto her, did we make her 
 cakes to worship her, and pour out drink- 
 offerings unto her, without our men?" 
 
 This cake was called boun or bun, and 
 the Vatican bun in question is also said 
 to contain a rude representation of the 
 two small fishes out of which so much 
 was made. But nevertheless does the 
 weight of evidence seem to be with those 
 who affirm that the Hot Cross-bun is a 
 survival of heathen times, when the peo 
 ple in their blindness bowed down to 
 gods of wood and stone. 
 D In an old book entitled A Month in 
 
Yorkshire is the statement that " biscuits 
 baked on Good-Friday would keep good 
 all the year, and a person ill with flux 
 had only to swallow one grated in milk 
 or brandy and water, and recovery was 
 certain." It also adds that " clothes hung 
 out to dry on Good-Friday would, when 
 taken in, be found to be spotted with 
 blood." 
 
 Hot Cross-buns were also considered 
 infallible, for their astringent qualities, in 
 Leicestershire, until a few years ago, but 
 always -accompanied by a dose of port 
 wine and spice. 
 
 A writer in Notes and Queries, April 4, 
 1863, apropos of the curative qualities of 
 Hot Cross-buns, says: "A lady inquired 
 of a laborer s wife [in Warwickshire] how 
 her neighbor s little son was. And the 
 latter replied that he had been very poor 
 ly with the bowel-complaint, and nothing 
 his mother gave him did him any good. 
 So she continued, I took a piece of 
 Good- Friday bread, and grated some of 
 it into a little brandy. The child took it, 
 and it cured him. Good-Friday bread ! 
 and what is that ? inquired the lady, who 
 
received for answer: Bread made and 
 baked on Good- Friday; it never goes 
 mouldy, and is very useful, grated in 
 brandy, as a medicine. The piece I have 
 now has been baked seven or eight years. 
 It is quite good, but very dry. I remem 
 ber my mother having some that had 
 been made more than twenty years. I 
 always keep it wrapped in paper in a box 
 upstairs. " 
 
 How far the brandy gilds the bread- 
 pill is not suggested. Some of the boys 
 who were brought upon Captain Marryat 
 will remember that the ship s doctor in 
 Newton Forster, or the Merchant Service, 
 had a patient on a long voyage who in 
 sisted upon eating the squares of ginger 
 bread which she had brought with her 
 as the only panacea for seasickness. 
 These he carefully administered to her, 
 but in the shape of pellets about the size 
 of fine shot ; and in three days he had 
 the satisfaction of seeing her walking the 
 deck with the. second mate, entirely re 
 covered. The second mate, it may be 
 stated, was his rival in her affections. 
 
 In some of the Cornish farm-houses 
 
even to this day the Good-Friday bun 
 may be seen hanging on the bacon-rack, 
 slowly drying up and diminishing, until 
 it is replaced by a fresh cake on the re 
 turn of the season. It is considered a sov 
 ereign remedy for the diseases that hu 
 man, or brute, flesh is heir to ; and a little 
 bit of it grated into a warm mash has 
 been given, within the memory of men 
 still living, to a sick cow. 
 
 The London Times in 1874 printed a 
 long description of an observance upon 
 the Good-Friday of that year, which, al 
 though not English, is perhaps worth 
 condensing. It seems that a crowd of 
 sailors from the Portuguese and from 
 certain of the South American vessels in 
 the London Docks observed their annual 
 custom of flogging Judas Iscariot. At 
 daybreak a block of wood, roughly carv 
 ed to imitate the betrayer, and clothed 
 in an ordinary sailor s suit, with a red 
 worsted cap on its head, was hoisted by 
 a rope around its neck to the fore-rigging. 
 After chapel the several crews returned 
 to the docks, lowered the figure, cast it 
 into the Thames, and ducked it three 
 
"34 
 
 times. It was then hoisted on board, 
 kicked about the decks, and lashed to 
 the capstan. The men, who by this time 
 seem to have worked themselves into a 
 state of frenzy, then knotted ropes with 
 which they whipped the effigy until every 
 vestige of its clothing had been cut to tat 
 ters. The various captains during the op 
 eration served grog to their own men, the 
 ships bells rang a discordant clatter, and 
 the on-lookers kept up a rude chant, in 
 termixed with denunciations of the false 
 disciple. The ceremony ended, said the 
 Times, with the burning of the effigy, 
 amid the jeers of the crowd. 
 
 Hone, in his Year Book, records a simi 
 lar performance during the first decade of 
 the century ; and no doubt it was of yearly 
 occurrence. It probably suggested to the 
 amiable and ingenious Mr. Quilp his ec 
 centric treatment of the wooden figure 
 head of a ship which once ornamented 
 his river-side abode. He was familiar 
 with the peculiar habits and customs of 
 foreign sailors, on account of his business 
 and long residence among them, and it 
 adds a new and timely interest to The 
 
135 
 
 Old Curiosity Shop to think that he was 
 simply imitating the Good-Friday "flog 
 ging of Judas " when he battered the 
 great goggle-eyed, blunt-nosed image, 
 which looked like a goblin or a hideous 
 idol, and which he declared to look like 
 his enemy Kit. He accompanied himself 
 with a monotonous vocal wail, which 
 swelled into a dismal roar, it will be re 
 membered, and he did not cease his op 
 erations until the perspiration streamed 
 down his face with the violence of the 
 exercise. " I bought the dog yesterday," 
 he remarked to Mr. Brass. "I ve been 
 screwing gimlets into him, and sticking 
 forks in his eyes, and cutting my name on 
 him. I mean to burn him at last." Brass 
 considered it extremely entertaining in 
 deed. And so it must have been. 
 
 Pepys has something to say about the 
 observance of Good - Friday in King 
 Charles II. s reign. In 1661 he "dined 
 with Sir W. Batten ; all fish dinner, it be 
 ing Good-Friday." In 1663 he wrote : 
 " It being Good-Friday, our dinner was 
 only sugar and sopps and fish, the only 
 time we have had a Lenten dinner all 
 
this Lent." On Good-Friday the next 
 year he " supped on wiggs and ale," wiggs 
 being a sort of cake, from wig, a wedge, 
 and no doubt Hot Cross-buns. 
 
 In 1665 Pepys wrote that he went to 
 Lady Sandwich s, "where [was] my wife 
 all this day, having kept Good-Friday 
 very strict with fasting. Here we supped 
 and talked very merry" The italics are 
 not his own. 
 
 On Good-Friday, 1672, Evelyn, on the 
 other hand, recorded that he " went to 
 see the fopperies of the Papists at Somer 
 set House and York House, where now 
 the French Ambassador had caused to 
 be represented our Blessed Saviour, with 
 his Disciples, in figures and puppets, 
 made as big as the life, of wax-work, 
 curiously clad, and sitting round a large 
 table, the room nobly hung and shining 
 with innumerable lamps and candles. 
 This was exposed to all the world ; all 
 the city came to see it ; such liberty had 
 the Roman Catholics at this time ob 
 tained." 
 
 On the Good-Friday of 1684, said the 
 same diarist, " there was such a concourse 
 
of people [at Whitehall] with their chil 
 dren to be touched for the Evil that six 
 or seven were crushed to death by press 
 ing at the chirurgeon s door for tickets." 
 Charles had been touched for his own 
 Evil before the arrival of the next Good- 
 Friday ; and a worse Evil than Charles 
 reigned in his stead. 
 
 Two very ancient and interesting Good- 
 Friday customs were observed in London, 
 according to the City Press, as late as 
 1887. The first was at St. Bartholomew s, 
 West Smithfield, where at half-past eleven 
 of the clock, A.M., twenty-one of the oldest 
 widows in the parish picked up, each, a 
 new sixpence from an old tomb in the 
 church-yard ; the peculiar and, to the old 
 woman, not unprofitable observance hav 
 ing existed for over four hundred years, 
 although nobody now knows why. The 
 second took place at All-hallows, Lom 
 bard Street, when sixty of the youngest 
 of the boys connected with the Bluecoat 
 School were presented, each, with a new 
 penny and a bag of raisins. This was in 
 pursuance of a bequest contained in the 
 last will and testament of one Peter Sy- 
 
monds, who died in 1665. One William 
 Petts both of that parish added, as 
 follows, to the bequest in 1692: "That 
 ye minister who preaches ye sermon be 
 fore ye boys on Goode Friday shall re 
 ceive 2os. ; ye clerke, 4^. ; and ye sexton, 
 35. 6d." Whether the rest of the congre 
 gation were invited to put anything into 
 the plate is not recorded ; and the Hot 
 Cross -bun was evidently neglected on 
 each occasion. 
 
XIII 
 
 MAY-DAY CUSTOMS IN ANCIENT TIMES 
 
 " More matter for a May morning." 
 
 Twelfth Night, Act III., Scene IV. 
 
 [HE ist of May has been a 
 moving day in the mother 
 country for many centuries, 
 although not in the modern 
 American sense of the words. 
 The inhabitants of the stately homes of 
 England and the dwellers in the hovels 
 at their gates have occupied the same 
 castles and the same cottages for gener 
 ations. And Tennyson s consumptive 
 young woman who sang, " I m to be 
 Queen of the May, mother, I m to be 
 Queen of the May," hoped to be the 
 chosen sovereign at the annual village 
 festival, not the self-elected and orna 
 mental monarch of a city household, who 
 
1 4 o 
 
 proposed to sit about doing nothing, while 
 her mother packed the crockery and took 
 up the carpets on the occasion of the an 
 nual flitting to another flat. 
 
 The amiable Spectator says (No. 365) 
 that "on the first day of this month [May] 
 we see the ruddy milkmaid exerting her 
 self in a most sprightly manner under a 
 pyramid of silver tankards, and, like the 
 virgin Tarpeia, oppressed by the costly 
 ornaments which her benefactors lay upon 
 her." Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, 
 explains that these decorationsof tankards 
 and the like " were borrowed for the oc 
 casion, and hung around the milk-pails, 
 with the addition of flowers and ribbons, 
 which the maidens carried upon their 
 heads when they went to the houses of 
 their customers, and danced in order to 
 obtain gratuities from them." It is not 
 easy to conceive of the mikmen of the 
 present going about on May-day with 
 anything but bills for those of their cus 
 tomers who are likely to move into 
 another street. 
 
 Another curious and obsolete May-day 
 custom is described in Hone s Every-day 
 
Book, where we read that " May day is 
 called La na Beat Una ; and May eve, 
 A 7 a Beal tina ; that is, day and eve of 
 Dial s fire. . . . The ceremony practised 
 on May-day eve of making the cows leap 
 over lighted straw or fagots has been 
 generally traced to the worship of that 
 deity. It is now [1832] vulgarly used to 
 save the milk from being pilfered by the 
 good people. " And elsewhere we are 
 told that in " Callander, Perthshire, Scot 
 land, on May I3th, which is old May day, 
 lots are drawn by taking pieces of cake 
 from a bonnet, and the person who draws 
 a piece which has been blackened is con 
 sidered as devoted to Baal, and is obliged 
 to jump three times through a fire." 
 This sounds a little strange, as coming 
 from the North Country in the first half 
 of the nineteenth century, where the re 
 ligion of the people is "something they 
 call Free Kirk," and very serious at that. 
 Early on May-day morning it was the 
 custom in Lincolnshire, up to the mid 
 dle of the present century, for the swains 
 to place branches of various trees at the 
 doors of the marriageable young women 
 
I 4 2 
 
 of the village. The twigs all meant some 
 thing, and were supposed to be emblem 
 atical of the character of the recipients, 
 or of the feelings of the donors, some 
 times complimentary, sometimes quite 
 the reverse. Wtcken, the local name for 
 the mountain-ash, meanf sweet chicken," 
 for instance ; oak, a " joke"; and plain ash 
 signified "trash." This last, probably, 
 was anonymous. 
 
 In Huntingdonshire, about the same 
 period, a doll ornamented with bits of 
 gay-colored ribbons and silks, candle 
 sticks, spoons, snuffers, and the like, was 
 suspended from a rope stretched across 
 the street on the ist of May. She was 
 supposed to represent Flora. She had 
 attendants and garlands, and the attend 
 ants carried the garlands to the Queen 
 of the May herself. The Queen was 
 chosen in the morning by her peers at 
 the village school, and by the same cabal 
 she was dethroned at night. It is ex 
 plained by Cuthbert Bede that " a parasol 
 was her sceptre, and her crown a wreath 
 of flowers. These she always bore with 
 grace and dignity, arrayed in a white 
 
gown and a white veil, and a bag that 
 displayed a white pocket-handkerchief." 
 Preceded by her maids of honor with the 
 garlands, and followed by her other at 
 tendants of both sexes, her majesty made 
 a right regal tour from door to door, de 
 positing in her bag, and by the side of 
 her handkerchief, all the substantial gifts 
 made by her loyal subjects ; these tithes, 
 usually edible, being consumed at the 
 coronation banquet. After the sover 
 eign and her court had partaken freely 
 of the votive offerings, they played " I- 
 spy," " Thread-the-needle," and " Blind- 
 man s buff"; and they were usually all ill 
 the next day. 
 
 The young people in Cornwall used to 
 hail May-day as " Dipping-day." They 
 were wont to gather the flowering branch 
 es of the white-thorn or the narrow- 
 leaved elm (called May boughs) which 
 had just put forth their leaves, and which 
 they distributed among their friends. 
 In the afternoon all the boys of the vil 
 lage, armed with buckets, cans, dippers 
 or " squirts," sallied out and availed them 
 selves of a license which the season con- 
 
i 4 4 
 
 ferred to "dip" or douse all persons, of 
 whatever rank or age, who were not fort 
 unate enough to be protected by the dis 
 play of the sprigs of the elm or hawthorn 
 which were passed about in the morn 
 ing. 
 
 It is curious to read that the deca 
 dence of this playful and pleasant Cor 
 nish custom is deplored by a writer who 
 regrets the decided change which has 
 taken place between the country gentle 
 man and his tenants, who bewails the 
 gradual but marked dying-out of the 
 feudal feeling, and who thinks that school 
 fetes, ploughing-matches, and horticultu 
 ral shows are a poor exchange for Christ 
 mas misrule and May-poles. 
 
 The great Metropolis, as well asthe towns 
 of the provinces in England, had its May 
 poles, and the most celebrated of these, 
 perhaps, was the May-pole in the Strand, 
 which was particularly distinguished for 
 the brave use to which it was put after 
 its May-polar eclipse. " Being grown old 
 and decayed, it was, anno 1717, obtained 
 by Sir Isaac Newton, Knt., of the parish," 
 according to Peter Cunningham, "and 
 
the next year it was carried to Wanstead 
 Park for the raising of a telescope." 
 The original May-pole in the Strand, 
 which stood near the site of the Church 
 of St. Mary-le-Strand, was denounced by 
 the Puritans as one of the last remnants 
 of vile barbarism, around which people 
 in holiday times use to dance, quite igno 
 rant of its original intent and meaning. 
 A Parliamentary ordinance in 1644 swept 
 it away, with all its companion shafts in 
 London; but in 1661 a tree, described as 
 a most choice and remarkable piece, 134 
 feet high, was erected in its stead by the 
 gracious consent of his sacred Majesty, 
 and the illustrious Prince the Duke of 
 York. This was the tree that supported 
 Newton s telescope in the reign of the 
 most sacred and illustrious George I. 
 
 Another famous London May -pole 
 gave its name to the church of St. An 
 drew Undershaft, in the ward of Aldgate. 
 It was taken down in 1517, on " Evil May 
 day," when a serious fight took place at 
 its foot between the apprentices and the 
 foreigners living in the parish. It was 
 not erected again until 1549, and soon 
 
i 4 6 
 
 after that it d isappeared altogether. Stow 
 relates how a certain curate preached 
 against it at Paul s Cross, accusing the 
 inhabitants of setting up for themselves 
 an idol in the parish ; which so moved 
 the inhabitants that they sawed it into 
 pieces and burned it. 
 
 May- poles, alas, are now things of the 
 past, and May-day festivals are now al 
 most unknown, except on the operatic 
 stage, or in the great Barnum & Bailey 
 show. Washington Irving wrote in the 
 Sketch-book : " I shall never forget the 
 delight I felt at first seeing a May-pole. 
 It was on the banks of the Dee, close by 
 the picturesque old bridge that stretches 
 across the river from the quaint little city 
 of Chester. ... I value every custom that 
 tends to infuse poetical feeling into the 
 common people, and to sweeten and 
 soften the rudeness of rustic manners 
 without destroying their simplicity. In 
 deed, it is to the decline of this happy 
 simplicity that the decline of this custom 
 may be traced ; and the rural dance on 
 the green and the homely May-day pa 
 geant have gradually disappeared in pro- 
 
portion as the peasantry have become 
 expensive and artificial in their pleasures, 
 and too knowing for simple enjoyment." 
 The unattached, unrewarded, but very 
 useful army of contributors to the Eng 
 lish Notes and Queries furnish a long list 
 of the May-poles still existing in England 
 five-and-thirty years ago. There was 
 one in Aldermaston, Berkshire, which 
 stood in a commanding position at the 
 top of the street. It was seventy-five 
 feet high, and was surmounted by a wind- 
 vane and a crown. There was one in 
 Bayton, Worcestershire, which had been 
 carefully preserved by the inhabitants 
 for many years ; and at Castle Bytham 
 Church in Lincolnshire the bell-chamber 
 was reached from the ringing-chamber 
 by a May-pole, which bore the date of 
 1660. But the present chronicler, who 
 has seen much of rural England, who 
 loves it well, and who realizes that the 
 English peasantry have indeed become 
 too knowing for simple enjoyment, can 
 only regret that he never experienced, 
 with Irving, the delight of seeing a May 
 pole on a village green, surrounded by 
 village green ies. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER, AND ITS AN 
 CIENT ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 " Which, like a waxen image gainst a fire, 
 Bears no impression of the thing it was." 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II., Scene IV. 
 
 R. BRANDER MAT- 
 
 THEWS, in his American 
 isms and Briticisms, calls 
 attention to the fact that 
 many established and ac 
 cepted Americanisms are but Briticisms 
 in disguise ; and he cites, particularly, 
 certain November customs of ours as 
 coming directly from our ancestors over 
 the ocean. On the evening of the Tues 
 day following the first Monday of No 
 vember, he says, the boys of New York, 
 in accord with their immemorial custom 
 on Election nights, illumine the city with 
 countless bonfires, not knowing, any of 
 
149 
 
 them, that they are thus commemorating 
 Guy Fawkes and the discovery of the 
 Gunpowder Plot. In like manner the 
 "dressing up of a Guy " still survives 
 among us on Thanksgiving Day, the last 
 Thursday of the same negative month. 
 Thus do we, on two memorable feasts, 
 imitate in the new land the celebration 
 of a permanent festival which the old 
 land has, in a measure, forgotten. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to relate here all 
 the well-known details of the British Gun 
 powder Plot of 1605. The accession of 
 the son of a Roman Catholic mother to 
 the throne of a Protestant Queen had, 
 naturally, raised in the breasts of the ad 
 herents of the old faith some hopes of an 
 unrestricted toleration, on the part of the 
 government, towards them. But James, 
 whatever his personal feelings may have 
 been, was too much under the dominion 
 of the Commons to resist; and many, 
 and certainly cruel and oppressive, were 
 the severities practised, by statute, upon 
 the Papists who lived in England during 
 the early part of his reign. The result 
 was a fanatical scheme to blow up, by 
 
gunpowder, the House of Lords and the 
 House of Commons, with everybody in 
 them, including the King, the Queen, the 
 Prince of Wales, and all the rest of the 
 royal family. The explosive material was 
 stored in a cellar under the Upper Cham 
 ber, and everything was ready for a grand 
 and unique celebration of the original 5th 
 of November when the plot was discov 
 ered. Guy Fawkes and his fellow-con 
 spirators were hoisted into an unexpected 
 and unpleasant notoriety with their own 
 petar, and James and his court were saved, 
 for one generation at least ; Charles I. 
 living to die at the hands of the very 
 party of enthusiasts who were condemned 
 to die with his father and his brother. 
 
 In the Tower of London is still pre 
 served a catalogue of those royal persons 
 who were to have gone up with the 
 Houses of Parliament. It is said to have 
 been the composition of the King him 
 self ; and as an exhibition of royal mod 
 esty in the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, it may be quoted in part. The 
 first on the list was: "James the Great, 
 King of Great Britain, illustrious for 
 
piety, justice, foresight, learning, hardi 
 hood, clemency and other regal virtues ; 
 Champion and Patron of the Christian 
 Faith, of the public safety, and of univer 
 sal peace ; author most subtle, most au 
 gust and most auspicious." The Queen 
 was described as " the most serene daugh 
 ter of Frederick the Second, invincible 
 King of Danes." Prince Henry was 
 designated as " the ornament of nature, 
 strengthened with learning, blest with 
 grace, born and given to us from God ;" 
 while we are told that Charles, Duke of 
 York, afterwards Charles I., was " divine 
 ly disposed to every virtue." 
 
 One Jeffrey Charlton, at his shop at the 
 Great North Door of St. Paul s, published 
 in 1606 a now very rare pamphlet en 
 titled: Gunpowder Plot. Arraignment and 
 Execution of the late Tray tors, the 2Jth 
 January, last past. A paragraph from 
 this work, as exhibiting the clemency 
 and other royal virtues of the Champion 
 and Patron of the Christian Faith, is here 
 set down in full : 
 
 " Last of all came the great Devil of all, 
 Fawkes alias Johnson, who should have 
 
I 52 
 
 put fire to the powder. His body being 
 weak with torture and sickness, he was 
 scarce able to go up the ladder, but with 
 much ado, by the help of the hangmen, 
 went high enough to break his neck by 
 the fall : who made no long speech, but, 
 after a sort, seeming to be sorry for his 
 offence, asked a kind of forgiveness of the 
 King and the State for his bloody intent, 
 and with his crosses and his idle cere 
 monies made his end upon the gallows 
 and the block, to the great joy of the be 
 holders, that the land was ended of so 
 wicked a villany." 
 
 We manage such things better in our 
 own days. Dynamiters get reprieves now, 
 and notoriety, and cakes and ale, and ask 
 no sort of forgiveness of anybody. 
 
 Guy Fawkes was designated the 
 " Damned - to - everlasting - fame man " ; 
 and his name I find thus variously 
 spelled by his contemporaries 1 " Fawks," 
 " Fawkes," " Fowks," " Faukes," " Faux," 
 and"Vaux." From this last do certain 
 etymologists derive the appellation of 
 Vauxhall Gardens, because of their dis 
 plays of fireworks, and because of the 
 
intimate association between fireworks 
 and Guy Fawkes. But Vauxhall Gar 
 dens were so called a century before fire 
 works became a feature of their enter 
 tainments. 
 
 In reply to Hazlitt s very ingenious 
 and subtle defence of Guy Fawkes and 
 his conspiracy, published anonymously in 
 1823, Charles Lamb wrote a humorous 
 essay in which he tried to imagine the 
 successful results of a similar attempt in 
 his own days ; and he thus describes the 
 scene in the terms of a Parliamentary re 
 porterthe italics and small capitals be 
 ing his own : " A motion was put and 
 carried that this House do adjourn ; that 
 the Speaker do quit the chair. The House 
 ROSE amid clamors for order." And he 
 concludes by an urgent appeal to the 
 people of England " by means less whole 
 sale than Guide s, to ameliorate, without 
 extinguishing, Parliaments; to hold the 
 lantern to the dark places of corruption ; 
 to apply the match to the rotten places 
 of the system only ; and to wrap them 
 selves up, not in the muffling mantle of 
 conspiracy, but in the warm honest cloak 
 
of integrity and patriotic intention." 
 These are words which the gentle Elia 
 might have applied seventy years later, 
 not only to the British Parliament, but 
 to the American Congress as well. 
 
 The fact that a distant kinsman of the 
 hero of the $th of November honored 
 America by his presence for a short time 
 during the first half of the present cen 
 tury is preserved in an historical volume 
 written by the late Charles Dickens. In 
 the opening chapter of the work in ques 
 tion the author says that there was un 
 questionably a Chuzzlewit in the Gun 
 powder Plot, if, indeed, the archtraitor 
 himself were not a scion of this remark 
 able stock, as he might easily have been, 
 supposing another Chuzzlewit to have 
 emigrated to Spain in the previous gen 
 eration, and there to have intermarried 
 with a Spanish lady by whom he had is 
 sue, one olive-complexioned son. If this 
 fact had been generally known upon the 
 arrival of Martin Chuzzlewit in America, 
 no one can say what would have been 
 the result ; and how far it would have 
 affected his life and nature it is difficult 
 
to imagine. A man with the blood of 
 Guy Fawkes in his veins might have been 
 triumphant on any Election day. He 
 might, even, as Governer of his State, 
 have issued Thanksgiving Day proclama 
 tions, signed by his own hand ; and he 
 might have lived to repeat history by 
 being hanged to a telegraph pole or a 
 lamp-post, or by being burned in effigy 
 for his political delinquencies, thus unit 
 ing a Briticism and an Americanism in 
 his own person. 
 
 It was not until well into the present 
 reign that the special services for the 
 5th of November were taken from the 
 ritual of the English Book of Common 
 Prayer by an ordinance of the Queen in 
 Council; while at the same time were 
 abolished those for the Martyrdom of 
 Charles I. and the Restoration of Charles 
 II. But no special ordinance and no 
 Queen in Council have been able to re 
 strain the British juvenile from his cele 
 bration of Guy Fawkes day. All over 
 the kingdom he dresses up scarecrow 
 figures on that joyful anniversary, clothes 
 them in such cast-off garments as he can 
 
156 
 
 steal or beg or borrow, parading them 
 by day on chairs through the principal 
 streets of the town he honors by his citi 
 zenship, and then burning them up with 
 great ceremony and barbaric rejoicing in 
 some very public place at night, to the 
 air of the familiar tune and with solemn 
 chant of the well-known words : 
 
 " Remember ! Remember ! 
 The Fifth of November, 
 The Gunpowder treason and plot; 
 For there is no reason 
 Why Gunpowder treason 
 Should ever be forgot." 
 
 The lines are faulty, but the sentiment 
 is laden with love of country, and it gives 
 the small boy a chance to make a noise 
 and a disturbance, which under no cir 
 cumstances does he ever willingly or 
 wittingly neglect. The invariable and 
 universal custom of the small boy in 
 England to solicit money from door to 
 door in order to make his elders pay for 
 the annoyance he causes them, still sur 
 vives in America, where the English small 
 boy s cousin goes about from area to area 
 for subscriptions for his fantastic foolery 
 
57 
 
 on Thanksgiving Day, and rings base 
 ment bells furiously until his demands are 
 complied with. 
 
 One Guy Fawkes day rhyme is pre 
 served in the pages of Notes and Queries 
 for November 3, 1855. It is a harmless 
 parody upon Wolfe s admirable ballad, 
 "The Death of Sir John Moore," and it 
 evidently refers to some unpopular mu 
 nicipal regulation. The first and the last 
 verse read as follows : 
 
 " Not a squib went fiz nor a rocket whiz 
 
 As the Guy to the gallows was hurried; 
 The mob was afraid of the New Police, 
 And therefore were deucedly flurried. 
 
 " Slowly and sadly the bonfire burned 
 
 Till it reached his upper story; 
 They fired not a gun nor a pistol, but turned, 
 And they left him alone in his glory." 
 
 Again the feet are faltering. But " his 
 upper story " is good. And it sounds like 
 the author of The Song of the Shirt, al 
 though his name is not generally associ 
 ated with it. 
 
 In earlier times the celebration of Guy 
 Fawkes day was not confined to boys 
 and rowdies, but was accompanied by 
 
. 5 8 
 
 most important and portentous ceremo 
 nies on the part of grave and reverend 
 seniors, especially in London. Two hun 
 dred cart-loads of fuel have been con 
 sumed in the feeding of a single fire in 
 Lincoln s Inn Fields, while no less than 
 thirty Guys were hung and burned there 
 on one particularly successful night. The 
 uproar is said to have been deafening 
 and blinding the mobs shouted, the 
 church bells rang, the fireworks blazed 
 and spluttered, and the gunpowder flashed 
 and banged. In later days contemporary 
 figures of unpopular celebrities were ex 
 changed for those of Guy Fawkes. Car 
 dinal Wiseman was hanged and burned 
 in effigy in London on the 5th of No 
 vember, 1850, because the Pope had made 
 him Archbishop of Westminster; and 
 on the same day, seven years afterwards, 
 a similar honor was conferred upon Nana 
 Sahib, because of his atrocities at Cawn- 
 pore. It is to be presumed that this 
 gentle churchman and the brutal Indian 
 did not mind this any more than does 
 Guy Fawkes himself. 
 
 In the early part of the present cenr 
 
159 
 
 tury it is said that on Guy Fawkes day, in 
 Lincolnshire, any person who could pro 
 cure a gun was at liberty to shoot it, not 
 only to make a noise, but to kill the game 
 which was carefully preserved on every 
 other day of the year ; and there used to 
 be a tradition in the North Country that 
 executions were prohibited on that sa 
 cred anniversary, although out of respect 
 for whom or for what nobody can find out. 
 
 A writer in Notes and Queries calls at 
 tention to a very old custom existing still 
 in West Riding, in Yorkshire, as late as 
 1857, which he considers as apparently 
 coeval with the annual bonfires and fire 
 works. It consists in the baking and 
 partaking, on that dreadful day, of a kind 
 of oatmeal gingerbread, the local name 
 of which is " Parkin." 
 
 Still another correspondent contrib 
 utes the following: "A singular custom 
 was observed on Thursday last [Novem 
 ber 5, 1857], at Durham. The Dean and 
 Chapter of the venerable cathedral sup 
 plied themselves with twenty shillings 
 worth of coppers, which they scattered 
 among as many of the juvenile citizens 
 
as chose to attend, and [naturally] many 
 availed themselves of the privilege." The 
 writer adds that this highly appropriate 
 game for a venerable ecclesiastical body 
 is known as "Push-penny," and that it 
 has existed very far beyond the memory 
 of the oldest inhabitant. But no hint is 
 given as to its origin, and no explanation 
 is made as to what it has to do with Guy 
 Fawkes or his nefarious scheme. 
 
 The connection between bonfires and 
 Election day, or even Guy Fawkes day, is 
 not very apparent, unless we accept Dr. 
 Johnson s derivation and definition 
 " From bon andyr<?, Fr. A fire made for 
 some publick cause of triumph" ; and 
 consider bonfires as an expression of good 
 feeling at the receipt of good news. But 
 Election-night bonfires are usually lighted 
 before news of any kind is received ; and 
 not infrequently they are kept lighted by 
 enthusiasts to whom the news, when it 
 does come, is apt to be bad. 
 
 Bonfires in England upon occasion of 
 rejoicing of any kind are as old as history. 
 But fireworks seem to have been little 
 known until the days of Elizabeth ; al- 
 
though when Anne Bullen was conveyed 
 to her coronation, before Elizabeth was 
 born, we read of one of the royal barges 
 as containing a great red dragon contin 
 ually moving and casting forth wild fire, 
 and round about stood terrible monsters 
 and wilde men, casting of fire, and making 
 a hideous noise. Strutt preserves many 
 records of pyrotechnic displays in honor 
 of the Virgin Queen, such as blazing, 
 burning darts flying to and fro, beams of 
 stars, coruscant streams and hail of fire, 
 sparks, lighting of wild fire on the water 
 and on the land, flight and shot of thun 
 der-bolts, etc. 
 
 Concerning the 5th of November, Pepys i 
 had almost nothing to say, except an 
 occasional expression of annoyance at 
 the bonfires which frightened the horses 
 who dragged his coach. But on the I4th 
 August, 1666, which was celebrated as a 
 thanksgiving day in honor of recent naval 
 successes, he alludes to fireworks in a 
 way so characteristic not of Pepys but 
 of fireworks that his words will well 
 bear quoting : " Abut nine to Mrs. Mer 
 cer s, where the fire and boys expected 
 
162 
 
 us, and her son had provided abundance 
 of serpents and rockets ; and there mighty 
 merry, my Lady Pen and Pegg going 
 thither with us, till about twelve at night, 
 flinging our fireworks, and burning one 
 
 another, AND THE PEOPLE OVER THE 
 
 WAY!" 
 
 The italics and small capitals in this 
 instance are my own. 
 
XV 
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY IN OLDEN TIMES. 
 
 "Now I am in a holiday humor." 
 
 As You Like It, Act IV., Scene I. 
 
 i HE Ghost of Christmas Past 
 has a great deal more to 
 show to the world at large 
 than it displayed to Mr. 
 Scrooge on that famous 
 Christmas Eve when Marley had been 
 just seven years dead. The Christmas 
 carols which have been written and sung 
 and printed, and lost and forgotten, would 
 fill many volumes, while the prose litera 
 ture devoted to Christmas would form a 
 good -sized library in itself. And yet 
 nobody knows anything about the origin 
 of Christmas ; nobody knows who first 
 celebrated it, or when or where or how ; 
 while more than half the customs and 
 
1 6 4 
 
 traditions of Christmas are involved in 
 absolute mystery or are a matter of mere 
 conjecture. 
 
 St. John of Chrysostom, who died in 
 407, in an epistle upon the subject of 
 Christmas Day, relates that St. Cyril of 
 Jerusalem instructed St. Julius, who died 
 in 352, to make a strict inquiry as to the 
 exact date of the Nativity of our Saviour, 
 and that the conclusion reached was that 
 it occurred on the 2$th December. All 
 these saints were likewise Bishops of 
 Rome. 
 
 Father Christmas, as he has been nat 
 uralized in the United States, seems to 
 have been of mixed and cosmopolitan 
 origin. Our Christmas carols appear to 
 have come from the Holy Land itself; 
 our Christmas trees from the East, by 
 way of Germany; our Santa Claus from 
 Holland ; our stockings, hung in the 
 chimney, from France or Belgium ; and 
 our Christmas cards and verbal Christ 
 mas greetings, our Yule-logs, our boars 
 heads, our plum-puddings, and our mince- 
 pies from England. Our turkey is, seem 
 ingly, our only contribution. 
 
As Jeremy Taylor points out, the first 
 Christmas Carol was the glorious song of 
 the angels at the birth of the Messiah. 
 In the British Museum is an Anglo- 
 Norman carol; and the earliest- printed 
 collection of carols was published, it is 
 said, by Wynkin de Worde in 1521. Only 
 one leaf of this book is known to the col 
 lectors, but it contains two specimens of 
 verse, one " A Caroll of Huntynge," the 
 other, "A Caroll Bringing in the Boar s 
 Head." Among the Harleian MSS. is a 
 carol written during the reign of Henry 
 VI. 
 
 The chronology of the Christmas tree 
 is very doubtful. Mr. Timbs finds its 
 roots in the land of the early Egyptians. 
 The Germans claim that it sprouted in 
 their fatherland. Other authorities trace 
 it back to the Roman Saturnalia, and 
 quote a line or two from the Georgics of 
 Virgil to prove their theory 
 
 " In jolly hymns they praise the god of wine, 
 Whose earthen images adorn the pine. 
 And these are hung on high in honor of the vine." 
 
 The translation is John Dryden s. 
 Still other authorities believe the tree 
 
1 66 
 
 to be a Buddhist importation, and to date 
 back to the fifth century of our era, and 
 they tell us that it is a custom still ob 
 served in Asia for the people, on certain 
 festive occasions, to stick trees in the 
 ground, upon the branches of which they 
 suspend their presents and their offer 
 ings. 
 
 To the Prince Consort has been as 
 cribed the honor of the introduction of 
 the Christmas tree into England. But a 
 Christmas tree is known to have played 
 an important part in a Christmas pageant 
 given in honor of Henry VIII. ; and Mr. 
 Greville in his Memoirs, December 27, 
 1829, says that "on Christmas the Prin 
 cess [Lieven] got up a little fete such as 
 is customary all over Germany. Three 
 trees, in great pots, were put upon a long 
 table, covered with pink linen ; each tree 
 was illuminated with three circular tiers 
 of colored wax candles blue, green, red, 
 and white. Before each tree was dis 
 played a quantity of toys, gloves, pocket- 
 handkerchiefs, work-boxes, books, and 
 various articles presents made to the 
 owner of the tree. It was very pretty. 
 
Here [England] it was only for the chil 
 dren ; in Germany the custom extends to 
 persons of all ages." 
 
 Charles G. Leland, in The English 
 Gypsies and Their Language, published 
 in 1874, prints a curious gypsy legend, 
 and of course an ancient one, which 
 touches in a tender way upon the cus 
 tom of church-decoration at Christmas 
 time. This it is: "The ivy and holly 
 a|nd pine trees never told a word where 
 our Saviour was hiding himself, and so 
 they keep alive all the winter, and look 
 green all the year. But the ash, like the 
 oak, told of him where he was hiding, so 
 they had to remain dead all the winter. 
 And so we gypsies always burn an ash 
 fire every great day." 
 
 The custom of decorating churches on 
 Christmas Eve has been traced to the 
 First Lesson of the evening service of 
 December 24th, in which occur these 
 words from Isaiah Ix. 13: "The glory 
 of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir- 
 tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, 
 to beautify the place of my sanctuary." 
 But Dean Stanley says that the decora- 
 
i68 
 
 tion of churches with holly is a religious 
 observance which comes down from the 
 time of the heathen, who suspended green 
 boughs and holly about their houses, 
 that the fairies and the spirits of the 
 woods might find shelter in them. 
 
 The mistletoe was gathered by the 
 Druids with no little ceremony at the 
 end of the old year ; and at the beginning 
 of the new year it was distributed among 
 the people. It was supposed to be an 
 j antidote to poison, and to possess the 
 mystic virtue of causing fertility. 
 
 There is said to have existed in medi 
 aeval times a very serious proverb to the 
 effect that if a maiden were not fortunate 
 enough to be kissed on Christmas Day 
 she could have no hope of being married 
 during the following year. And it is 
 gravely recorded that in latter days the 
 mistletoe was excluded from the Christ 
 mas decorations in the English churches 
 because the smacking was sometimes so 
 loud that it interrupted the services ! 
 
 There is a tradition and a fervent belief 
 among the villagers of certain sections of 
 England that the Christmas-thorn bios- 
 
i6 9 
 
 soms on the 6th January (Twelfth-day), 
 and on that day only, and that this curi 
 ous fact if it be a fact establishes the 
 truth of that being the date of the birth 
 of the Christ. 
 
 The origin of Christmas-giving cer 
 tainly goes back to the days of the Ro 
 mans, and before the days of Christ ; but 
 one ancient theory of its application in 
 Christendom is worth quoting in part. 
 John Dunton, in his Athenian Oracle 
 (1728), says that " it is as old as the word 
 mass itself, which the Romish priests 
 invented from the Latin Mitto, to send, 
 by putting the people in mind to send 
 gifts, offerings, oblations ; to have masses 
 said for anything they chanced to want. 
 Thus the mass at this particular time of 
 the year was the Christ s mass, and the 
 money gathered was deposited in the 
 Christ s-mass box, hence the term still 
 employed in England, particularly among 
 dependants, who were given something 
 by their employers to help them buy a 
 seasonable paternoster of the Church." 
 
 The Christmas card is comparatively a 
 modern innovation, and it is said to have 
 
I 7 
 
 been patented about the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, when the ordinary 
 calling -cards containing the words " A 
 Merry Christpias " were supplemented by 
 printed cards upon which were various 
 forms of Christmas greeting, and draw 
 ings of holly branches and the like. The 
 oldest of these in existence, it is said, was 
 published in London in 1846, and the 
 custom is believed to have come from 
 Germany. 
 
 The Yule-log is supposed to have been 
 transmitted to the Britons from their 
 Scandinavian ancestors, who at their feast 
 of the winter solstice lighted great bon 
 fires in honor of Thor. The fragments 
 of one Christmas log were carefully pre 
 served, in the Middle Ages, to start the 
 fire in the log of the next Christmas; 
 and it was long a tradition that if a flat- 
 footed woman, or a squinting person of 
 either sex, was permitted to enter the 
 house while the log was burning, bad luck 
 to somebody was sure to follow. 
 
 The Christmas bill of fare in the brave j 
 days of old was rich and varied. The 1 
 chief and most important dish was the 
 
boar s head, and the second was roast 
 peacock, although it is by no means clear 
 why either of them ever came to be as 
 sociated with the occasion. 
 
 Edmund Yates looks upon the eating 
 of the boar s head as a fiction, and be 
 lieves it to have been merely a show dish ; 
 the real knife-and-fork play commencing 
 with the second course, when cranes, 
 herons, bitterns, partridges, plover, wood 
 cock, and snipe were brought to table. 
 
 The Christmas pie of the ancients is 
 not altogether identical with the mince- 
 pie so generally consumed at Christmas 
 time in our days. One writer describes 
 it as. "a most learned mixture of neat s 
 tongues, chicken, eggs, raisins, lemon and 
 orange peel, various kinds of spices," etc., 
 and he speaks of plum-porridge as "a 
 sort of soup with plumbs, which is not at 
 all inferior to the pye." How far these 
 dishes are the direct ancestor of the 
 plum-pudding of the present is not now 
 known. 
 
 Christmas under the Commonwealth I 
 was not a particularly cheerful or festive j 
 occasion. In 1647 the Cromwellian gov- 
 
eminent ordered the Common Crier to 
 inform the public that Christmas Day, as 
 being a superstitious and a hurtful cus 
 tom, could no longer be observed ; and 
 that markets should be held on the 25th 
 December. A few years later, on the 
 24th December, " The House before 
 they rose were presented with a ter 
 rible remonstrance against Christmas 
 Day, grounded upon Divine Scripture, in 
 which Christmas is called Anti-Christ s 
 Mass," etc. The result was that Parlia 
 ment resolved to sit on the following 
 day, "commonly called Christmas." 
 
 In the Commons Journal for Decem 
 ber 24, 1652, we read the following : " RE 
 SOLVED, That the markets be kept To 
 morrow, being the 25th December. And 
 that the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of 
 London and Middlesex, and the Justices 
 of the Peace for the City of Westminster, 
 and Liberties thereof, do take care that 
 all such Persons as shall open their 
 Shops on that Day be protected from 
 Wrong or Violence, and the Offenders 
 punished. RESOLVED, That no Obser 
 vation shall be had on the 25th Day of 
 
December, commonly called Christmas 
 Day, nor any Solemnity used or exercised 
 in Churches upon that Day, in respect 
 thereof. ORDERED, That the Committee 
 of Whitehall do see that the Shops in 
 Westminster Hall be kept open To-mor 
 row." 
 
 Evelyn, in 1652, wrote, in a pathetic way, 
 on the 2$th December, " No sermon any 
 where, no church being permitted to be 
 open, so observed it at home." Another 
 diarist, a year later, recorded a debate in 
 the House of Commons which shows that 
 the efforts of the Cromwellians to sup 
 press the day were not altogether suc 
 cessful. Colonel Matthews complained 
 that the House was thin, and offered a 
 short bill to prevent the superstition. 
 Mr. Robinson complained that he could 
 get no rest all night for the preparation 
 of this foolish day s solemnity. Major- 
 General Packer thought the bill " well 
 timed." But the king came home again, 
 in 1660, and Christmas came back with 
 the king to stay ! The good old Christ 
 mas times and customs were revived, in 
 cluding the passing of the wassail bowl ; 
 
and the gentry went from London to 
 their country-seats and kept open-house, 
 entertaining their tenants and the trades 
 people in the ancient festive way. 
 
 One of the Puritan tracts, dated 1655, 
 bears the following descriptive title : 
 Christmas Day ; taking to Heart the Hea 
 then s Fasting Day in Honour to Saturn, 
 their Idol God. The Papist s Massing 
 Day. The Prophane Mans Ranting Day. 
 The Superstitious Mans Idol Day. The 
 Multitude s Idle Day. Whereon because 
 they can do Nothing they do worse than 
 Nothing. The name of the enthusiastic 
 author of this publication is not given 
 on its title-page. This was one of many 
 published broadsides of the period, which 
 labored to prove, among others things, 
 that Christmas was comparatively a mod 
 ern festival ; that it had grown out of 
 the ancient Saturnalia, the pagan feast 
 of Saturn ; that it is not enjoined in 
 Scripture ; and that above all it was 
 forbidden by the Parliament then sit 
 ting. 
 
 In a tract called The Vindication of 
 Christmas, published in 1653, Old Christ- 
 
175 
 
 mas himself gives the following account 
 of what happened in Devonshire on his 
 day: "After dinner," he says, "we arose 
 from the board, and sate by the fire, 
 where the Harthe was imbroidered all 
 over with roasted Apples, piping hot, 
 expecting a bole of Ale for a cooler, which 
 immediately was transformed into warm 
 Lamb-wool. After which we discoursed 
 merrily without either profaneness or 
 obscenity ; some went to cards, others 
 sang carols and pleasant songs (suitable 
 to the Times) ; when the poor labouring 
 Hinds, and Maid-servants, with the Plow- 
 boys went nimbly to dancing ; the poor 
 toyling wretches being glad of my com 
 pany, because they had little, or no sport 
 at all till I came amongst them; and 
 therefore they skipped and leaped for joy 
 singing a carol to the tune of hey 
 
 Let s dance and sing and make good chear, 
 For Christmas comes but once a year. 
 
 The lines, slightly altered, were written 
 by Thomas Tusser at least a century 
 earlier. 
 
 In a rare old pamphlet called Christ 
 mas Entertainments, dated 17 34. we are 
 
i 7 G 
 
 told that " There was once upon a time 
 Hospitality in the Land [of Britain]. An 
 English Gentleman at the opening of the 
 great Day had all his Tenants and Neigh 
 bours enter d his hall by day-break , the 
 strong beer was broach d, and the black 
 jack went plentifully about, with toast, 
 sugar, and nutmeg, and good Cheshire 
 cheese; the rooms were embower d with 
 holly, ivy, cypress, bays, laurel, and mis 
 tletoe, and a bouncing Christmas-log in 
 the chimney glowing like the cheeks of a 
 country milkmaid ; then was the pewter 
 as bright as Clarinda, and every bit of 
 brass as polished as the most refined 
 Gentleman ; the servants were there, run- 
 ing here and there with merry hearts and 
 jolly countenances ; every one was busy in 
 welcoming of Guests, and look d as smug 
 as new lick d puppies ; the Lasses were as 
 blithe and buxom as the maids in good 
 Queen Bess s day, when they eat sirloins 
 of roast beef for breakfast." 
 
 Another curious old tract, dated 1735, 
 relates to "The Tryal of Old Father 
 Chrystmas, For Encouraging his Maj 
 esty s Subjects to Idleness, Gluttony, 
 
I 7 7 
 
 Drunkenness, Gambling, Swearing, Riot 
 ing, and all Manner of Extravagance and 
 Debauchery." The Tryal was held at the 
 Assizes in the City of Profusion, before 
 the Lord Chief Justice Churchman, Mr. 
 Justice Feast, Mr. Justice Gambol, and 
 several other of his Majesty s Justices of 
 Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery. 
 The prisoner pleaded " Not Guilty," but 
 one Caleb Carefull swore against him 
 that "he has eaten [Chrystmas has eaten, 
 not Caleb] one thousand hams, one thou 
 sand two hundred dozens of fowls, one 
 thousand five hundred chines, two thou 
 sand five hundred sirloins of beef, three 
 thousand gallons of plum porridge, sev 
 enteen thousand minced pies, with bread 
 in proportion, with strong beer, Geneva, 
 brandy, punch, and wine beyond all pro 
 portion," and all this in one day ! The 
 prisoner in his defence declared that he 
 was above one thousand seven hundred 
 years old, and never was questioned at 
 Assizes or Sessions before. The jury with 
 out retiring found a verdict for the de 
 fendant, which verdict was greeted "with 
 loud shouts and applause of the joyful 
 
i 7 8 
 
 crowd " ; and the judge, cautioning Father 
 Christmas to temper his hospitality with 
 prudence, avoiding gluttony and excess, 
 dismissed the case. 
 
 There is a tradition in Lancashire that 
 at midnight on Christmas Eve the cows 
 fall on their knees and the bees hum 
 "Old Hundredth." The hum of bees 
 can be made to sound like any tune the 
 listener is willing to fancy it, and the 
 cows on any night of the year, or on any 
 day, get on their knees first on rising 
 from the ground, as is their well-known 
 habit. 
 
 A curious and effective Christmas cus 
 tom is recorded in a History of Carrtck- 
 fergus, which was printed in the first 
 decade of the present century. " Late 
 on Christmas Eve," it says, "young men 
 and boys [young men are generally boys] 
 assemble and collect carts, cars, gates, 
 boats, planks, etc., with which they block 
 up the Irish, or West, gate of this town. 
 There is a vague tradition [like all Christ 
 mas traditions, it is vague] that the cus 
 tom originated in the Protestant inhab 
 itants shutting the gates on the Roman 
 
Catholics when they went out to mass 
 on Christmas Eve. . . . Within memory 
 it was common for boys to assemble 
 early at the school-house on the morning 
 before Christmas, and to bar out the 
 master, who was not admitted till he 
 promised a certain number of days vaca 
 tion. Early on Christmas Day the boys 
 set out to the country in parties of eight 
 or twelve, armed with staves or blud 
 geons, killing and carrying off such fowls 
 as came their way. These were taken to 
 their respective school-rooms and cooked 
 the following day. To the feast many 
 persons were invited, who furnished liq 
 uors or other necessaries [liquors in our 
 time are looked upon as luxuries], and 
 the entertainments usually continue for 
 several days. As civilization increased," 
 adds the historian, "these marauding 
 feasts became less popular, and the de 
 cline of the custom was much hastened 
 [not by the increase of civilization, but] 
 by the discovery that the cooks often 
 purloined the best fowls to them 
 selves." 
 
 Any tradition which takes boys early 
 
i8o 
 
 to school on any day of the year may cer 
 tainly be put down as vague ! 
 
 Christmas, for a curious reason, is said 
 to have been a peculiarly sad day for the 
 farmers and rural householders of Chesh 
 ire, for by an ancient custom which pre 
 vailed almost universally in that county 
 half a century ago, all agricultural ser 
 vants engaged themselves from New 
 Year s Eve to Christmas Day, by virtue 
 of which agreement they took a week off 
 for play and recreation ; and left the 
 families of their employers to wait upon 
 and cook and work for themselves. Mr. 
 Thomas Hughes describes these farm 
 servants, men and women, as dressed in 
 holiday attire and crowding the streets 
 of Chester, with their year s wages in 
 their pockets. " They invest their in 
 comes in smock-frocks, cotton dresses, 
 plush waistcoats, or woollen shawls, all of 
 the gayest and most showy colors and 
 varieties, and they hold high carnival in 
 the small shops and lowest taverns. It 
 is amusing to mix in the throng on 
 such occasions," he adds, "and to watch 
 these children of nature unadorned ; 
 
their straggling gait, their fanciful ap 
 parel, to hear their quaint exclamations 
 and their outlandish dialect, which few 
 educated natives could understand with 
 out a glossary." 
 
 All this goes to prove that the creator 
 of Scrooge and of Tiny Tim was not the 
 inventor of Christmas. He merely re 
 vived and restored Christmas, with the 
 aid of Washington Irving; and taught 
 us, on this particular day of the year at 
 least, to do a little better to our fellow- 
 men. 
 
 God bless us every one ! 
 
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