"Ball. Feare not, I'le be a fiery Dragon." And afterwards, when Boote askes him: "Miles, the Miller of Ruddington, gentleman and souldier, what make you here? "Miles. Alas, Sir, to borrow a few ribbandes, bracelets, eare-rings, wyertyers, and silke girdles and hand-kerchers, for a Morice, and a show before the Queene. "Boote. Miles, you came to steale my Neece. "Miles. Oh Lord! Sir, I came to furnish the Hobby Horse. "Boote. Get into your Hobby Horse, gallop, and be gon then, or I'le Morisdance you-Mistris, waite you on me. Exit. "Ursula. Farewell, good Hobby Horse.-Weehee." Exit. [Mr. Douce informs us, that the earliest vestige now remaining of the Hobby Horse is in the painted window at Betley, already described. "The allusions to the omission of the Hobby Horse are frequent in the old Plays, and the line, 'For O, for O, the Hobby Horse is forgot,' is termed by Hamlet an epitaph, which Mr. Theobald supposed, with great probability, to have been satirical." A scene in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Women pleased," Act iv. best shows the sentiments of the Puritans on this occasion. 'Whoever," says Mr. Douce, "happens to recollect the manner in which Mr. Bayes's troops, in 'The Rehearsal,' are exhibited on the stage, will have a tolerably correct notion of a Morris Hobby Horse. Additional remains of the Pyrrhic, or sword-dance, are preserved in the daggers stuck in the man's cheeks, which constituted one of the hocus-pocus or legerdemain tricks practised by this character, among which were the threading of a needle, and the transferring of an egg from one hand to the other, called by Ben Jonson the travels of the egg". To the horse's mouth was suspended a ladle, for the purpose of gathering money from the spectators. In later times the fool appears to have performed this office, as may be collected from Nashe's play of "Summer's last Will and Testament," where this stage-direction occurs: "Ver goes in and fetcheth out the "Every Man of out of his Humour, Act ii. sc. 1, Hobby-horse and the Morrice Daunce, who daunce about.' Ver then says: 'About, about, lively, put your horse to it, reyne him harder, jerke him with your wand, sit fast, sit fast, man; Foole, hold up your ladle there.' Will Summers is made to say, 'You friend with the Hobby Horse, goe not too fast, for fear of wearing out my lord's tyle-stones with your hob-nayles.' Afterwards there enter three clowns and three maids, who dance the Morris, and at the same time sing the following song: Lord Orford, in his Catalogue of English Engravers, under the article of Peter Stent, has described two paintings at Lord Fitzwilliam's, on Richmond Green, which came out of the old neighbouring palace. They were executed by Vinckenboom, about the end of the reign of James I., and exhibit views of the above palace: in one of these pictures a Morris Dance is introduced, consisting of seven figures, viz. a fool, a Hobby-horse, a piper, a Maid Marian, and three other dancers, the rest of the figures being spectators." Of these, the first four and one of the dancers Mr. Douce has reduced in a plate from a tracing made by the late Captain Grose. "The fool has an inflated bladder, or eelskin, with a ladle at the end of it, and with this he is collecting money. The piper is pretty much in his original state; but the hobby-horse wants the legerdemain apparatus, and Maid Marian is not remarkable for the elegance of her person." "A short time before the Revolution in France," Mr. Douce informs us, "the May games and Morris Dance were celebrated in many parts of that country, accompanied by a fool and a Hobby-horse. The latter was termed un chevalet; and, if the authority of Minshew be not questionable, the Spaniards had the same character under the name of tarasca*." * Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners, vol. ii. pp. 463, 468, 471. ST. URBAN'S DAY. (Twenty-fifth of May.) UNDER Saint Paul's Day, I have shown that it is customary in many parts of Germany to drag the image of St. Urban to the river, if on the day of his feast it happens to be foul weather. J. B. Aubanus tells us, that "upon St. Urban's Day all the vintners and masters of vineyards set a table either in the market-steed, or in some other open and public place, and covering it with fine napery, and strawing upon it greene leaves and sweete flowers, do place upon the table the image of that holy bishop, and then if the day be cleare and faire, they crown the image with greate store of wine; but if the weather prove rugged and rainie, they cast filth, mire, and puddle water upon it; persuading themselves that, if that day be faire and calme, their grapes, which then begin to flourish, will prove good that year; but if it be stormie and tempestuous, they shall have a bad vintage." p. 282. The same anecdote is related in the Regnum Papisticum of Naogeorgus. ROYAL OAK DAY. ON the twenty-ninth of May 2, the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles the Second, it is still customary, especially in the North of England, for the a "May the 29th, (says the author of the Festa Anglo-Romana, 12mo. Lond. 1678,) is celebrated upon a double account; first, in commemoration of the birth of our sovereign king Charles the Second, the princely son of his royal father Charles the First of happy memory, and Mary the daughter common people to wear in their hats the leaves of the oak, which are sometimes covered on the occasion with leaf-gold. This is done, as every body knows, in commemoration of the marvellous escape of that monarch from those that were in pursuit of him, who passed under the very Oak tree in which he had secreted himself, after the decisive battle of Worcester b. I remember the boys at Newcastle upon Tyne had formerly a taunting rhime on this occasion, with which they used to insult such persons as they met on this day who had not oak-leaves in their hats: "Royal Oak, The Whigs to provoke." There was a retort courteous by others, who contemptuously wore plane-tree leaves, which is of the same homely sort of stuff: "Plane-tree leaves; The Church-folk are thieves." Puerile and low as these and such like sarcasms may appear, yet they breathe strongly that party-spirit which they were intended to promote, and which it is of Henry the Fourth, the French king, who was born the 29th day of May 1630; and also, by Act of Parliament, 12 Car. II. by the passionate desires of the people, in memory of his most happy Restoration to his crown and dignity, after twelve years forced exile from his undoubted right, the crown of England, by barbarous rebels and regicides. And on the 8th of this month, his Majesty was with universal joy and great acclamations proclaimed in London and Westminster, and after throughout all his dominions. The 16th he came to the Hague; the 23d, with his two brothers, embarqued for England; and on the 25th he happily landed at Dover, being received by General Monk and some of the army; from whence he was, by several voluntary troops of the nobility and gentry, waited upon to Canterbury; and on the 29th, 1660, he made his magnificent entrance into that emporium of Europe, his stately and rich metropolis, the renowned city of London. On this very day also, anno 1662, the king came to Hampton Court with his queen Catherine, after his marriage at Portsmouth. This, as it is his birth-day, is one of his collar-days, without offering." p. 66. b "It was the custom, some years back, to decorate the monument of Richard Penderell (in the church-yard of St. Giles in the Fields, London), on the 29th of May, with oak branches; but, in proportion to the decay of popularity in kings, this practice has declined." Caulfield's Memoirs of remarkable Persons, p. 186. Had Mr. Caulfield attributed the decline of this custom to the increasing distance of time from the event that first gave rise to it, he would perhaps have come much nearer to the truth. the duty of every good citizen and real lover of his country to endeavour to suppress c. The Royal Oak was standing in Dr. Stukeley's time, inclosed with a brick wall, but almost cut away in the middle by travellers, whose curiosity led them The party spirit on this occasion shewed itself very early: for, in the curious tract, entitled, "The Lord's loud Call to England," published by H. Jessey, 4to, 1660, p. 29, we read of the following judgement, as related by the Puritans, on an old woman for her loyalty. "An antient poor woman went from Wapping to London to buy flowers, about the 6th or 7th of May 1660, to make garlands for the day of the king's proclamation (that is, May 8th), to gather the youths together to dance for the garland; and when she had bought the flowers, and was going homewards, a cart went over part of her body, and bruised her for it, just before the doors of such as she might vex thereby. But since, she remains in a great deal of misery by the bruise she had gotten, and cryed out, the devil! saying, the devil had owed her a shame, and now thus he had paid her. It's judged at the writing hereof that she will never overgrow it." I find a note too in my MS Collections, but forget the authority, to the following effect: "Two soldiers were whipped almost to death, and turned out of the service, for wearing boughs in their hats on the 29th of May 1716." "A bow-shoot from Boscobel-house," says Dr. Stukeley, in his Itinerarium Curiosum, fol. Lond. 1724. Iter. iii. p. 57, "just by a horse-track passing through the wood, stood the Royal Oak, into which the king and his companion, colonel Carlos, climbed by means of the hen-roost ladder, when they judg'd it no longer safe to stay in the house; the family reaching them victuals with the nuthook. The tree is now enclosed in with a brick wall, the inside whereof is covered with lawrel, of which we may say, as Ovid did of that before the Augustan palace, mediamque tuebere quercum.' Close by its side grows a young thriving plant from one of its acorns. Over the door of the inclosure, I took this inscription in marble: "Felicissimam arborem quam in asylum potentissimi Regis Caroli II. Deus O. M. per quem reges regnant hic crescere voluit, tam in perpetuam rei tantæ memoriam, quam specimen firmæ in reges fidei, muro cinctam posteris commendant Basilius et Jana Fitzherbert. Quercus amica Jovi." In "Carolina, or Loyal Poems," by Thomas Shipman, esq. 8vo, Lond. 1683, p. 53, are the following Thoughts on this Subject: VOL. I. "Blest Charles then to an oak his safety owes; The Royal Oak! which now in songs shall live, G G |