called threshing the fat hen, which is thus explained in Tusser Redivivus. "The hen is hung at a fellow's back, who has also some horse-bells about him; the rest of the fellows are blind-folded, and have boughs in their hands, with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court or small enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as well as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and his hen; other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh one another well favouredly; but the jest is, the maids are to blind the fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning baggages will indulge their sweet hearts with a peeping hole, while the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After this the hen is boiled with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are (is) made. She, that is noted for lying a-bed long or any other miscarriage, hath the first pan-cake presented to her, which most commonly falls to the dog's share at last, for no one will own it their due."

Other sports of a less brutal nature characterized this day. The game of football was at one time common not only among the London apprentices but in all the Northern counties of England. We are told that even so lately as the end of the eighteenth century the town-waits used to go playing to Alnwick Castle every Shrove Tuesday at two o'clock, p. m. when a football was thrown over the castle-wall for the amusement of the populace. At Chester also the same sport must have once prevailed, for King in his Vale Royal of England (p. 194) says that at the city of Chester in the year 1533 "the offerings of ball and foot-ball were put down, and the silver bell offered to the maior on Shrove Tuesday."

In Cumberland there was a custom, according to Hutchinson, which we do not remember to have heard of as occurring elsewhere. He says in his history of

that country. "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 school, were strongly barricadoed within; and the boys, who defended it like a beseiged 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. The whole was concluded by a festivity, and a treat of cakes and ale furnished by the scholars.

"One of the articles, always stipulated for and granted, was the privilege of immediately celebrating certain games of long standing, viz. 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 football players were sought for with great diligence. The party, whose cocks won the most battles, was held as

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 cockfight was ended, the foot-ball was thrown down in the church-yard; 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."

Before quitting this part of our subject it may be as well to add that the brutal custom of cock-fighting originated with the polished Athenians. Ælian tells us in his Various History that the Athenians ordained cockfighting should take place once a year in the public theatre, and he thus gives the origin of the custom : When Themistocles was leading the Greek forces against the Persians, he observed two game-cocks fighting by the way, whereupon he brought the whole army to a halt and addressed them, saying," these birds are thus perilling themselves, not for their country, nor for their Gods, nor for their ancestral heroes, nor for their children, but merely because neither will allow the superiority of the other."* This pithy speech and example confirmed the courage of his soldiers, and he wished therefore that the thing should be held in perpetual remembrance. However we may feel disposed to doubt this pretty fable as to the actual origin of the custom, it is yet a sufficient testimony that it did at one time exist.

But the peculiar feature of Shrove Tuesday was the

* Æliani Var. Hist. Lib. 11-Cap. xxviii.

frying and eating of pancakes, a practice which Brand would fain derive from a kind of pancake feast that was used in the Greek Church just before Lent. How we were likely to have got it from such a quarter he does no attempt to explain, and the thing seems not a little improbable. It would appear much more likely that this, as well as the other cakes used on the feasts and particular days of the year, was borrowed from a similar sort of offering amongst the Pagans, or else from the shew-bread of the Jews. Why the cake should be made in a pan, rather than baked in the usual way, is a mystery that we do not pretend to unravel.

We have already alluded to the old custom of ringing in people to confession on Shrove-tide morning. When the Reformers abolished so much of the antient Roman Catholic rites they found themselves in the same difficulty as the early Christians, who, upon their faith becoming predominant over heathenism, were yet unable to altogether eradicate the old Pagan customs; in this case therefore, as in so many others, they imitated their Roman Catholic predecessors and what they could not entirely get rid of they converted as far as possible to their own purposes. Thus the bell continued to peal as it had been used, but to call people to pancakeeating instead of to confession, an instance of which we have at Newcastle-upon-Tyne where the great bell of Saint Nicholas' church is tolled at twelve o'clock at noon, when the shops are immediately shut up, offices closed, and all kinds of business cease, a little carneval ensuing for the rest of the day. In Leicestershire also, as we learn from Macauley's History and Antiquities of Claybrook, "a bell rings at noon, which is meant as a signal for the people to begin frying their pancakes." In York too they have a similar custom, as appears from a curious old tract, entitled, A Vindication of the Letter

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out of the North concerning Bishop Lake's Declaration, &c., wherein the author says they have for a long time at York had a custom-which now challenges the privilege of a prescription—that all the apprentices, journeymen, and other servants of the town, had the liberty to go into the cathedral, and ring the PancakeBell, as we call it in the country, on Shrove Tuesday: and that being a time that a great many came out of the country to see the city (if not their friends) and church, to oblige the ordinary people the minster used to be left open that day to let them go up to see the lanthorn and bells, which were sure to be pretty well exercised, and was thought a more innocent divertisement than being at the ale-house. But Doctor Lake when he came first to reside there, was very much scandalized at this custom, and was resolved he would break it at first dash, although all his brethren of the clergy did dissuade him from it. He was resolved to make the experiment, for which he had like to have paid very dear, for I'le assure you it was very near costing him his life. However he did make such a combustion and mutiny, that I dare say York never remembered, nor saw the like, as many yet living can testify."

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, puts an end for a time to these wild doings, substituting as absurd a fast, in imitation of our Saviour's miraculous abstinence for forty days. Originally the fast commenced on that which is now the first Sunday in Lent, and ended on Easter Day, but as this left only thirty-six days when the Sundays were deducted (upon the principle that no Sunday can ever be a fast-day,) Pope Gregory added four days from the previous week, beginning with Ash Wednesday. The name of Ash Wednesday was derived from the ancient ceremony of blessing ashes at this season, with which the priest signed the