of buckler for defence. The edge of the sword was a little blunted, and the care of the prize-fighters was not so much to avoid wounding one another, as to avoid doing it dangerously; nevertheless, as they were obliged to fight, till some blood was shed, without which nobody would give a farthing for the show, they were sometimes forc'd to play a little ruffly. I once saw a much deeper and longer cut given than was intended. These fights are become very rare within these eight or ten years. Apprentices, and all boys of that degree, are never without their cudgels, with which they fight something like the fellows before-mention'd, only that the cudgel is nothing but a stick; and that a little wicker basket, which covers the handle of the stick, like the guard of a Spanish sword, serves the combatant instead of defensive arms.'

Bug, Welsh Bwg, a goblin. We now use bugbear without much recollection, perhaps, of the etymology. Boggle-bo, says Coles, (now corruptly sounded Bugabow), signified "an ugly wide-mouthed picture carried about with May-games." It is perhaps nothing more than the diminutive of Bug, a terrifying object. Lat. Dict., 1678, in v. In Mathew's Bible, Psalm xci., v. 5, is rendered, "Thou shalt not nede be afraied for any bugs by night," this is hence known as the Bug Bible. In the Hebrew it is "terror of the night"; a curious passage, evidently alluding to that horrible sensation the night-mare, which in all ages has been regarded as the operation of evil spirits. Compare Douce's Illustr., i., 328. Boh, Warton tells us, was one of the most fierce and formidable of the Gothic Generals, and the son of Odin: the mention of whose name only was sufficient to spread an immediate panic among his enemies. The same was the case with that of Narses among children. Compare Richard-Cœur-de-Lion.

Boe Bulbagger, as he is there called, in "Jacke of Dover, his Quest of Inquirie for the Veriest Foole in England," 1604, is mentioned as a sort of bogie or bugbear. Taylor the water-poet, in his "Great Eater of Kent," 1630, says of his hero, Nicholas Wood : he is a maine enemy to Ember weekes, he hates Lent worse than a butcher or a Puritan, and the name of Good Friday affrights him like a Bull-beggar." In Rowley's Woman never Text, 1632, mine host says of his disorderly guests: "The bull-beggar comes when I show my head." Compare Barguest.

Bull-Baiting. Fitzstephen mentions the baiting of bulls with dogs as a diversion of the London youths on holidays in his time. Descr. of London, temp. Henry II., apud Antiq. Reper. v., 1807, vol. i. Hentzner, who visited England in

Elizabeth's reign, says: "There is a place built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened behind, and then worried by great. English bull-dogs; but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other: and it sometimes happens they are killed on the spot. Fresh ones are immediately supplied in the place of those that are wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men, standing circularly, with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot. escape from them because of his chain. He defends himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his reach, and are not active enough to get out of it, and tearing the whips out of their hands and breaking them. At these spectacles, and every where else, the English are constantly smoking tobacco." Itinerary, 1612, transl. 1757. When Robert Chamberlaine published in 1637 his New Book of Mistakes, there seems from the preface to have been a white bull at the Bear garden in Southwark, "who tosseth up Dogges," he says, "like Tennis-balles," and catching them again upon his hornes, makes them to garter their Legges with their owne guts." Misson, in his Travels in England, trans. by Ozell, 1734, describes bul-baiting as it was practised in the time of William III.

A considerable body of authentic testimony exists to shew that this apparently cruel amusement was due to a theory on the part of our ancestors, that the process rendered the flesh more tender, and some of the Leet Courts in England imposed a fine of 3s. 4d. on every butcher, who killed a bullock unbaited. Bull-rings were established for this purpose, and at Carlisle it is mentioned that the Butchers' Gild had charge of the chain used in the operation. Antiquary for AprilMay, 1893. We still deem a coursed hare, somewhat on the same principle, tenderer than a shot one. Bull-baiting was still carried on in the Midlands and in the North down to the second half of the nineteenth century; and the women enjoyed the sport as keenly as the men. At Leigh, near Preston, according to a story told me by a Leigh man, a fellow,in a room with his wife and a dog trained to this exercise, laid his head on a table; the dog rushed at his nose, the husband cried out from the pain, and would have got up, but, says the woman, 'lie still, man, he must draw blood, or he will be just ruined.' -Hazlitt's Four Generations of a Literary Family, 1897, ii., 296.

M. Michel, in "Le Pays Basque," 1857, traces back this diversion in

that country to the year 1385. There is no want of material for the history of the sport on the other side of the Pyrenees subsequently to that date. Most of the Spanish princes appear to have encouraged it by their countenance and support.

At Stamford, in Lincolnshire, an annual sport used to be celebrated, called bull-running: of which the following account is taken from Butcher: "It is performed just the day six weeks before Christmas. The butchers of the town at their own charge against the time, provide the wildest bull they can get this bull over night is had into some stable or barn belonging to the Alderman. The rext morning proclamation is made by the common bellman of the town, round about the same, that each one shut up their shop-doors and gates, and that none, upon pain of imprisonment, offer to do any violence to strangers, for the preventing whereof (the town being a great thoroughfare and then being in Term Time) a guard is appointed for the passing of travellers through the same without hurt. That none have any iron upon their bull-clubs or other staff which they pursue the bull with. Which proclamation made, and the gates all shut up, the bull is turned out of the Alderman's house, and then hivie skivy, tag and rag, men, women, and children of all sorts and sizes, with all the dogs in the town promiscuously running after him with their bull-clubs spattering dirt in each other's faces, that one would think them to be so many Furies started out of Hell for the punishment of Cerberus, as when Theseus and Perillus conquered the place (as Ovid describes it):

Bull-Running.

"A ragged troop of boys and girls Do pellow him with stones: With clubs, with whips, and many raps, They part his skin from bones." And (which is the greater shame) I have seen both senatores majorum gentium and matrones de eodem gradu, following this bulling business." "I can say no more of it, but only to set forth the antiquity thereof, (as the tradition goes). William Earl of Warren, the first Lord of this town, in the time of King John, standing upon his castle-walls in Stamford, viewing the fair prospects of the river and meadow, under the same, saw two bulls a fighting for one cow; a butcher of the town, the owner of one of those bulls, with a great mastiff dog accidentally coming by, set his dog upon his own bull, who forced the same bull up into the town, which no sooner was come within the same but all the butchers' dogs, both great and small, follow'd in pursuit of the bull, which by this time made stark mad with the noise

of the people and the fierceness of the dogs, ran over man, woman, and child, that stood in the way; this caused all the butchers and others in the town to rise up as it were in a tumult, making such an hideous noise that the sound thereof came into the Castle unto the ears of Earl Warren, who presently thereupon mounted on horseback, rid into the town to see the business, which then appearing (to his humour) very delightful, he gave all those meadows in which the two bulls were at the first_found fighting, (which we now call the Castle Meadows) perpetually as a common to the butchers of the town, (after the first grass is eaten) to keep their cattle in till the time of slaughter: upon this condition, that as upon that day on which this sport first began, which was (as I said before) that day six weeks before Christmas, the butchers of the town should from time to time yearly for ever, find a mad bull for the continuance of that sport." Survey of Stamford, 1775-76. In the "Antiquarian Repertory," an account is extracted from Plot of a similar bull-running at Tutbury, in Staffordshire, which occasioned much disorder annually, until it was abolished by the Duke of Devonshire, lay-prior of Tutbury, in the eighteenth century. This practice seems to have dated from ancient times, as it was usual, before the Dissolution, for the Prior of Tutbury to give the minstrels, who attended matins on the feast of the Assumption, a bull, if they would convey him on the side of the river Dove next the town or failing the bull, forty pence, of which a moiety went by custom to the lord of the feast. I believe that the practice of bullrunning, and also of bull-baiting, is universally obsolete in this country, and has long been so.

Bull Week.-In Sheffield, this is the name given to the week before Christmas. The men work overtime, and often do not order that they may earn money to spend leave off till one or two in the morning, in in celebrating the great Christian festival. Their festive enjoyment chiefly consists in brutal drunkenness.

Bumpers.—Bumpers are of great antiquity. Paulus Warnefridus is cited in lib. v. "De Gestis Langobard." cap. 2, in Du Cange's 66 Glossary," telling us Cumque ii qui diversi generis potiones ei a Rege deferebant, de verbo Regis eum rogarent, ut totam fialam biberet, ille in honorem Regis se totam bibere promittens, parum aquæ libabat de argenteo Calice." Vide Martial, lib. i. Ep. 72; lib. viii. 51,

&c

Comp. Drinking Customs.

Bundling used to be a widely diffused Welsh custom before marriage: the betrothed or engaged pair went to bed, or more frequently lay together in their

G

Besydes these charmes afore

I have feates many more
That kepe styll in store,

Whom nowe I over hyppe."

A

And the rest is in a similar strain. Little Book of Songs and Ballads, 1851, pp. 115-17. See Prevaricator.

Burning the Dead Horse.—A

6

Nash, in his 'Notes on Hudibras," says. "Cato recommends the following as a charm against sprains: Haut, haut, hista, pista, vista.' Andrews, the continuator of Henry, quoting Reginald Scot, says: "The stories which our facetious author relates of ridiculous charms which, by the help of credulity, operated wonders, are extremely laughable. In one of them a poor woman is commemorated who cured all diseases by muttering a certain form of words over the party afflicted; for which service she always received one penny and a loaf of bread. At length, terrified by menaces of flames both in this world and the next, she owned that her whole conjuration consisted in these potent lines, which she always repeated in a low voice near the head of her patient :

"Thy loaf in my hand,

And thy penny in my purse,
Thou art never the better-

And I am never the worse." Melton tels us: "That a man may know what's a clocke only by a ring and a silver beaker." Astrologestis, 1620, p. 45. This seems equally probable, with what we read in Hudibras:

"And wisely tell what Hour o' th' Day The clocke does strike by Algebra." From Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia, 1609, Dr. Rimbault has extracted the humorous

effusion of this class, entitled: Martin said
to his Man, where the second stanza runs :
I see a sheepe shearing corne,
Fie! man, fie!

I see a sheepe shearing corne,
Who's the foole now?
I see a sheepe shearing corne,
And a cuckold blow his horne;
Thou hast well drunken, man,
Who's the foole now?

a

wooden horse suspended from the shrouds on crossing the line. See a representation of it in Black and White, January 9, 1892. 36, and come from the prepayment of a Its origin and meaning are explained on p. month's wages, which are usually squandered on shore, so that a sailor works, as he thinks, for nothing during what is termed the Horse or first month, at the conclusion of which this imaginary animal is burnt, and Jack is really on his legs again.

Burning Shame.-A custom said See Mr. T. Nicholls's publication, 1812. to be peculiar to Newport, Isle of Wight.

Burying Old Tom.—The labourers in Herefordshire usually indulge in an extra glass or two on New Year's Eve, and call this burying Old Tom. The festivities usually include considerable uproar and confusion, and the assistants at these peculiar funeral obsequies rarely quit the tavern parlour, till mine host makes a clearance. They have some verses adapted for the occasion, which they sing on their way homeward through the streets, not always, as it may be supposed, in the best time or with the clearest accents. Mr. T. H. Pattison communicated a copy to "Current Notes" for January, 1856:

"I wish you a merry Christmas,
And a happy New Year;
A pocket full of money
And a cellar full of beer;
And a good fat pig,

To serve you all the year. Ladies and gentlemen sat by the fire, Pity we, poor boys, out in the mire.' Bush. There is a well known proverb, "Good wine needs no bush" ;i.e. nothing to point out where it is to be sold. Dickenson, in his "Greene in Conceipt," 1598, has it: "Good wine needes no Ivie Bush.' The subsequent passage in Rowlands' "Good Newes and Bad Newes," 1622, seems to prove that anciently tavern keepers kept both a bush and a sign: a host is speaking:

"I rather will take down my bush and sign

In the same author's "Knave of Harts," Then live by means of riotous expence." 1612, "the drunken knave exclaims:

"What claret's this? the very worst in towne :

Your taverne-bush deserves a pulling downe."

In "England's Parnassus," 1600, the first line of the address to the reader runs thus: "I have no ivie out to sell my