money for his funeral, as this day, according to their creed, is the death of good living. After sundry absurd mummeries, the corpse is deposited in the earth." This is somewhat similar to the custom of the Holly Boy. Armstrong, in his History of Minorca, p. 202, says, "During the Carnival, the ladies amuse themselves in throwing oranges at their lovers; and he who has received one of these on his eye, or has a tooth beat out by it, is convinced from that moment that he is a high favourite with the fair one who has done him so much honour. Sometimes a good handfull of flour is thrown full in one's eyes, which gives the utmost satisfaction, and is a favour that is quickly followed by others of a less trifling nature. We well know that the holydays of the ancient Romans were, like these carnivals, a mixture of devotion and debauchery.This time of festivity is sacred to pleasure, and it is sinful to exercise their calling until Lent arrives, with the two curses of these people, Abstinence and Labour, in its train." Among the sports of Shrove Tuesday, cock-fighting and throwing at cocks appear almost everywhere to have prevailed. Fitzstephen, as cited by Stowe, informs us that anciently on Shrove Tuesday the school-boys used to bring cocks of the game, now called game-cocks, to their master, and to delight themselves in cock-fighting all the forenoon. One rejoices to find no mention of throwing at cocks on the occasion, a horrid species of cowardly cruelty, compared with which, cock-fighting, savage as it may appear, is to be reckoned among "the tender mercies" of barbarity. The learned Moresin informs us that the Papists derived this custom of exhibiting cock-fights on one day every year from the Athenians, and from an institution of Themistocles. "Galli Gallinacei," says he, "producuntur per diem singulis annis in pugnam à Papisequis, ex veteri Atheniensium forma ducto more et Themistoclis instituto." Cal. Rhod. lib. ix. variar. lect. cap. xlvi. idem Pergami fiebat.; Alex. ab Alex. lib. v. cap. 8.-Moresini Papatus, p. 66. An account of the origin of this custom amongst the Athenians may be seen in Æliani Variæ Historiæ, lib. ii. cap. xxviii. This custom was retained in many schools in Scotland within the last century. Perhaps it is still in use. The schoolmasters were said to preside at the battle, and claimed the run-away-cocks, called Fugees, as their perquisites.' According to Fitzstephen: "After dinner, all the youths go into the fields to play at the ball. The scholars of every The school have their ball or bastion in their hands. ancient and wealthy men of the city come forth on horseback to see the sport of the young men, and to take part of the pleasure, in beholding their agility." Strype's edit. of Stowe, i. 247. See also Dr. Pegge's edit. of Fitzstephen's London, 4to. 1772, pp. 45, 74. It should seem that Foot-Ball is here meant. In Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, 1795, xv. 521, the minister of Kirkmichael, in Perthshire, speaking of the manners and customs of the inhabitants, says, "Foot-ball is a common amusement with the school-boys, who also preserve the custom of cockfighting on Shrove Tuesday." Hutchinson, in his History of Cumberland, ii. 322, speaking of the parish of Bromfield, and a custom there, that having now fallen into disuse, will soon be totally forgotten, tells us, "Till within the last twenty or thirty years, it had been a custom, time out of mind, for the scholars of the free school of Bromfield about the beginning of Lent, or, in the more expressive phraseology of the country, at Fasting's Even, to bar out the master; i. e. to depose and exclude him from his school, and keep him out for three days. During the period of this expulsion, the doors of the citadel, the 1 Carpentier calls "Gallorum pugna" ludi genus inter pueros scholares, non uno in loco usitati. Lit. remiss. An. 1383, in Reg. 134. Chartoph. Reg. ch. 37.-" En ce Karesme entrant une feste ou dance que l'en faisoit lors d'enfans pour la jouste des coqs, ainsi qu'il est accoustumé (en Dauphiné)." Du Cange, in his Glossary, ii. 1679, says, that although this practice was confined to schoolboys in several provinces of France, it was nevertheless forbidden in the Council of Copria (supposed to be Cognac) in the year 1260. The decree recites "that although it was then become obsolete, as well in grammar schools as in other places, yet mischiefs had arisen, &c." "DUELLUM GALLORUM gallinaceorum etiamnum in aliquot provinciis usurpatum a scholaribus puerulis, vetatur in Concilio Copriniacensi An. 1260, cap. 7. quod scilicet superstitionem quamdam saperet, vel potius sortilegii aut purgationis vulgaris nescio quid redoleret; quia ex duello gallorum, quod in partibus istis, tam in Scholis Grammaticæ, quam in aliis fieri inolevit, nonnulla mala aliquoties sunt exorta," &c. Du Cange, in verbo. Vide Carpentier, v. Jasia. school, were strongly barricadoed within: and the boys, who defended it like a besieged city, were armed in general with bore-tree or elder pop-guns. The master meanwhile made various efforts, both by force and stratagem, to regain his lost authority. If he succeeded, heavy tasks were imposed, and the business of the school was resumed and submitted to; but it more commonly happened that he was repulsed and defeated. After three days' siege, terms of capitulation were proposed by the master, and accepted by the boys. These terms were summed up in an old formula of Latin Leonine verses, stipulating what hours and times should for the year ensuing be allotted to study, and what to relaxation and play. Securities were provided by each side for the due performance of these stipulations, and the paper was then solemnly signed both by master and scholars. "One of the articles always stipulated for and granted, was the privilege of immediately celebrating certain games of long standing; viz. a foot-ball match and a cock-fight. Captains, as they were called, were then chosen to manage and preside over these games: one from that part of the parish which lay to the westward of the school; the other from the east. Cocks and foot-ball players were sought for with great diligence. The party whose cocks won the most battles was victorious in the cock-pit; and the prize, a small silver bell, suspended to the button of the victor's hat, and worn for three successive Sundays. After the cock-fight was ended, the foot-ball was thrown down in the churchyard; and the point then to be contested was, which party could carry it to the house of his respective captain, to Dundraw, perhaps, or West-Newton, a distance of two or three miles, every inch of which ground was keenly disputed. All the honour accruing to the conqueror at foot-ball, was that of possessing the ball. Details of these matches were the general topics of conversation among the villagers, and were dwelt on with hardly less satisfaction than their ancestors enjoyed in relating their feats in the border wars. It never was the fortune of the writer of this account to bear the bell (a pleasure which it is not at all improbable had its origin in the bell having been the frequent, if not the usual reward of victory in such rural contests). Our Bromfield sports were some times celebrated in indigenous songs: one verse only of one of them we happen to remember : "At Scales, great Tom Barwise gat the ba' in his hand, Tom Cowan then pulch'd and flang him 'mang t' whins, "One cannot but feel a more than ordinary curiosity to be able to trace the origin of this improvement on the Romish Saturnalia; and which also appears pretty evidently to be the basis of the institution of the Terræ filius in Oxford, now likewise become obsolete; but we are lost in a wilderness of conjectures: and as we have nothing that is satisfactory to ourselves to offer, we will not uselessly bewilder our readers.' Part of the income of the head master and usher of the Grammar School at Lancaster arises from a gratuity called a Cock-penny, paid at Shrove-tide by the scholars, who are sons of freemen. Of this money the head master has seventwelfths, the usher five-twelfths. It is also paid at the schools at Hawkshead and Clithero, in Lancashire; and was paid at Burnley till lately, and at Whiteham and Millom, in Cumberland, near Bootle. [There is a schoolboy's rhyme, used in a game not uncommon in some parts of Yorkshire, which may possibly have some reference to this practice, A nick and a nock, A hen and a cock, And a penny for my master.] THROWING AT COCKS. The unknown but humane writer of a pamphlet entitled Clemency to Brutes, 1761, after some forcible exhortations against the use of this cruel diversion, in which there is a shocking abuse of time, (" an abuse so much the more shocking as it is shewn in tormenting that very creature which seems by nature intended for our remembrancer to improve it: the creature whose voice, like a trumpet, summoneth man forth to his labour in the morning, and admonisheth him of the flight of his most precious hours throughout the day,") has the following observation :-" Whence it had its rise among us I could never yet learn to my satisfaction; but the common account of it is, that the crowing of a cock prevented our Saxon ancestors from massacreing their conquerors, another part of our ancestors, the Danes, on the morning of a Shrove Tuesday, whilst asleep in their beds." In an old jest-book entitled Ingenii Fructus, or the Cambridge Jests, &c., by W. B., Lond. printed for D. Pratt, corner of Church-lane, Strand, no date, 12mo, is given what is called the original of "the throwing at cocks on ShroveTuesday," in which the rise of this custom is traced up to an unlucky discovery of an adulterous amour by the crowing of a cock. This account, I scarce need observe, is too ridiculous to merit a serious confutation. In the pamphlet just cited, Clemency to Brutes, is the following passage: "As Christians, consider how very ill the pastime we are dissuading from agrees with the season, and of how much more suitable an use the victims of that pastime might be made to us. On the day following its tumultuous and bloody anniversary, our church enters upon a long course of humiliation and fasting and surely an eve of riot and carnage is a most unfit preparative for such a course. Surely it would be infinitely more becoming us to make the same use of the cock at this season which St. Peter once made of it. Having denied his master, when it crew he wept." The author adds, though by mistake, “no other nation under heaven, I believe, practises it but our own." : In the British Apollo, 1708, vol. i. No. 4, is the following query: "How old, and from whence is the custom of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday? A. There are several different opinions concerning the original of this custom, but we are most inclined to give credit to one Cranenstein, an old German author, who, speaking of the customs observed by the Christian nations, gives us the following account of the original institution of the ceremony: When the Danes were masters of England, and lorded it over the nations of the island, the inhabitants of a certain great city, grown weary of their slavery, had formed a secret conspiracy to murder their masters in one bloody night, and twelve men had undertaken to enter the town by a stratagem, and seizing the arms, surprise the guard which kept it; and at which time their fellows, upon a signal given, were to |