Festivals, games, and amusements

Front matter

SoanisH Department

(lass.

PKi:SEXTi:i) BY

Preface

The subjects considered in this volume have been so thoroughly sifted by professed antiquaries, that when they were submitted to the present writer, he at once perceived the impossibility of illustrating them by any new facts, while he felt the difficulty of compressing within the narrow limits assigned to him the vast quantity of materials that had been accumulated by his predecessors. Compilation and selection were the principal tasks left to him ; — by these means he has endeavoured to condense into one little volume the information that he found dispersed in many ; and to present in as popular and pleasing a form as possible, what has been too often encumbered, in more erudite disquisitions, with learned lore and antiquarian pedantry. It is hoped that in thus pruning away the useless leaves, in order to render the fruit more evident and attractive, little has been sacrificed which, for general purposes, it would have been desirable to retain. In works of this nature, which profess to be little more than summaries and abridgments, it is difficult to hit the happy medium between meager analysis and the fulness of original inquiry. Some readers, in their anxiety for knowledge, will require facts rather than comments ; others, who are in search of amusement rather than of information, will prefer deductions and illustrations to minute-

Vm PREFACE.

ness and detail. To satisfy each of these classes is scarcely practicable ; but it has been endeavoured to conciliate both, as far as possible, by varying the treatment of the different subjects, in order to adapt them, at least in some degree, to this diversity of tastes.

Instead of attempting to appropriate to himself the information of others, by translating it into his own phraseology, the present writer has frequently adopted the identical language of the original, freely using the privilege of omission, or condensation, interspersing such observations of his own as suggested themselves in his progress, and invariably stating at the end of each chapter, where his obligations are not acknowledged by previous foot-notes, the authorities whence his materials have been derived.

Only a portion of the spacious field of inquiry comprehended in our titlepage could be brought within the limits of this little work ; and for the same reason many of the notices must inevitably be slight and cursory, where the writer could have wished to render them more general and enlarged. From the inviting subject of the ancient tilts and tournaments he was compelled to abstain, because these pastimes, belonging to the province of Chivalry, have already been considered in the twentieth volume of this Library. How far the following selections have been made with judgment, and presented in an eligible form, must be left to the indulgence of the reader.

London, 1831.

Chapter I

" Yet in the vulgar this weak humour's bred,— They'll sooner be with idle customs led, Or fond opinions, such as they have store, Than learn of reason or of virtue's lore."

Wythers.

When the adage tells us that a man is to be known by the company he keeps, it is only to affirm that his character is best developed in his amusements ; for the society of familiar intercourse is a recreation founded upon congeniality of disposition. Our trades, professions, and serious pursuits are not always matter of choice ; nay, they are often prosecuted from duty or necessity against our own inclinations ; and afford, therefore, no certain test of individual predilection. It is in our diversions, where we follow the spontaneous impulse of the mind, that its genuine qualities are revealed. It is here seen, as it were, en deshabille, in which state its real beauties and deformities can be much more accurately determined than when it is tricked out in the appropriate garb of station and profession, or disguised in any of the manifold varieties of conventional observance. Every man is an actor, who, if he wishes to ensure the successful performance of his part upon the great theatre of the world, must practise a certain degree of illusion. To ascertain the truth we must get behind the scenes, into the privacy of the performer's amusements and relaxations — a process by which we shall often discover the verity of the dictum that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre ; and that exterior gravity, sanctimonious pretension, and even the su perficial qualities of wisdom may be assumed and worn by triflers, libertines, and simpletons. A man may impose upon his spectators in the public business of life, so much of which is scenic and fictitious ; but he cannot deceive either himself or others in his private pursuits. There is no hypocrisy in our pleasures : in these nature will always predominate ; and the relaxation in which we indulge will be generally found proportionate to the previous constraint that has warped us from our proper bias ; just as the recoil of the unstrung bow will be commensurate with the tension from which it is released.

No censure is implied in this contrast, however extreme, so long as the diversions to which we betake ourselves are unobjectionable in their nature ; for the greatest minds are known to have stooped to simplicity, and even to childishness in their sports ; as the lark, although it flies higher than any other bird, sinks to the lowly ground to repose itself and to build its nest. None but a pompous blockhead or solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes, never indulges in pastime, never wastes his breath in idle waggery and merriment. Such gravity is of the very essence of imposture, where it does not spring, as is frequently the case, from a morbid austerity or morose ignorance. " Let us be wise now, for I see a fool coming," said Plato, when he was once joking with his disciples, and saw a churl of this stamp approaching them. Occasional playfulness,, indeed, seems to be natural to all strong minds. " The most grave and studious," says Plutarch, " use feasts, and jests, and toys, as we do sauce to our meat." Agesilaus, as everybody knows, amused himself and his children by riding on a stick ; the great Scipio diverted himself with picking up shells on the seashore ; Socrates used to dance and sing by way of relaxation ; the facetious Lucian and the grave Scaliger have both confessed the pleasure they found in singing, dancing, and music. Maecenas, with his friends Virgil and Horace, delighted in sports and games. Shakspeare played on the bass-viol, which he accompanied with his voice ; and the witty Swift amused himself with hunting and chasing his friends, the two Sheridans, through all the rooms of the deanery.

Man is the only animal that laughs, a faculty that would hardly have been bestowed upon him unless it were intended to be called into exercise. The fantastical and unnatural

ANCIENT AND MODERN. 13

severity that disclaims all merriment and relaxation is but a different and Lafinitely less pleasing mode of self-love, seeking a sullen gratification by affecting to despise the gratifications of others. There are individuals, no doubt, in whom such solemn strictness may be unaffected : to minds that are intrinsically grovelling and low-bent a certain stiffness and rigidity may be a relief, for an erect tension is the natural relaxation of those who have been long stooping. Such starched rigorists recall the well-known story of the man in the pit of the Dublin theatre, who refused to sit down when all the others were seated, upon which a voice from the gallery cried out, " Ah ! leave the poor creature alone ; he's a tailor, and he's only resting himself."

It need excite little surprise that the laborious, the learned, and the dignified are often not less frivolous in their diversions than the shallowest loungers and coxcombs. The latter may be termed professional triflers, who thus waste their hours because they cannot otherwise employ them ; the former are amateur idlers, who have been such good economists of their time that they can well afford to throw some away, and who only relax in order to invigorate their minds. Hurdis had formed no erroneous view of human pursuits when he exclaimed,

We trifle all ; and he who best deserves, Is but a trifler. What art thou whose eye Follows my pen ; or what am 1 that write 1 — Both triflers.

The more trivial our recreations the more accurately will they often reveal the qualities of the mind, as the lightest feather we can toss up wUl best determine the direction of the wind. If this be true of an individual, it will be equally applicable to a nation, whose familiar and domestic character we may much better ascertain from their sports, pastimes, and amusements, than from those more prominent and important features to which historians have usu'illy restricted themselves in their delineations. Laws, institutions, empires, pass away and are forgotten ; but t} e diversions of a people, being commonly interwoven with some immutable element of the general feeling, or perpetuated by circumstances of climate and locality, will ft-*;quently survive when every other national peculiarity has worn itself out and fallen into oblivion. As the minds of children, modified by the forms of society, are pretty much the same in all countries and at all epochs, there will be found little variation in their ordinary pastimes— a remark equally applicable to those nations vv^hich, from their non-advancement in civilization, may be said to have still retained their cliildhood. Many of our school-games are known to have existed from the earliest antiquity; the diversions of the wild Arabs have remained immutable for many ages. Nor do the common people of any country easily abandon their most frivolous amusements, although in every other respect their character may have undergone a total change. Nothing can be more dissimilar than an ancient and a modem Roman ; yet we see the porters and the market-people of the Eternal City seated on the ruins of her forgotten grandeur, and playing at the game of the morra,* exactly as they are recorded to have done in the days of the republic and of the emperors. Even in royal life we are enabled by occasional glimpses of history to trace an identity of amusement at very different periods. From the circumstance of his using his prisoner, the Roman emperor Valerian, as his footstool when he mounted his horse, we know that Sapor, the monarch of Persia, used to hunt with ounces or leopards trained to act as hounds, and carried out to the field in wooden cages ; a mode of sporting which, aft;er the lapse of fifteen centuries, continues to be a favourite pastime with the native princes of India, who run down the antelope with the hunting leopard or cheeta.

Although toil and sorrow, the penalties of the fall, seem to have been entailed upon the bulk of mankind as their sole and melancholy inheritance, we read not of any canon that prohibits a temporary alleviation of their doom by means of sports, pastimes, and amusements. These indeed may be said to form a portion of our very nature ; the constitution both of the human mind and body unfitting them for incessant occupation, and imperatively dictating occasional diversion as an indispensable condition of their healthy exercise. To trace the variation in the nature of these respites from anxiety and drudgery, had we sufficient 'materials for closely following up the inquiry, would be to record

* Guessing at the number of fingers suddenly held up.

ANCIENT AND MODERN. )5

the progress of the human mind, deriving our data from the pleasant fields of public sport and private recreation, instead of exploring those revolting fields of battle, and not less repugnant scenes of crime, violence, and misery, which offer such abundant resources to the historian. Happiness and amusement, how^ever, are deemed unworthy of notice by the annalist, who seems to imagine that the reader, while he finds delight in the carnage, revolution, and angry passions that have harassed his fellow-creatures, can have little pleasure in conveying the few and fleeting enjoyments that may have soothed their turbulent career.

In the recorded manners of different nations, as they have been handed down to us by ancient writers, we catch, however, occasional though unconnected glimpses of their public and private recreations. Of these we shall freely avail ourselves as opportunity may occur ; but without reference to such specific sources of information, the general principles of our nature will enable us to form a rough outline of the changes that have taken place in the amusements of mankind at large, according to the influences of time and civilization. At the outset of the world, ere the agricultural state had commenced, and when the few inhabitants of the earth were too much occupied in providing for their subsistence to have made even the rudest attempts at civilization, we can hardly imagine them to have indulged in any other diversion than field-sports ; if it be not a misnomer to apply that term to the painful and precarious toil of naked savages, urged to the chase by the cravings of hunger, or compelled to struggle with wild ijeasts for the doubtful possession of their lairs and caverns. Most painful it is to fix our contemplations upon a period when this majestical sun-lighted globe, so beautiful and magnificent in itself, and filling so glorious a part in the sublime pageant of the God-directed universe, was doomed, for some inscrutable object of the Divine wisdom, to purposes apparently so unworthy of the splendid stage upon which they were performed : when man, whose reasoning faculties were yet undeveloped, was little superior to the beasts he chased : when the tearing of limbs, the shedding of blood, and mutual destruction were the sole and incessant occupation of every animated being, until death, the universal hunter, who, though he may sometimes prolong the chase, nevei eventually spares his prey, ran down and annihilated every thing that moved upon the face of the earth. By comparing the world as it then existed with the happiness and widely-diffused civilization with which it is now blessed, and above all, by contrasting the hourly-improving intellectual eminence of the living generation with the ignorant barbarism of the early ages, we may form some conception, though probably but a dim one, of the glorious destiny which a beneficent Providence has reserved for mankind, even in our present sphere.

When mankind had partially advanced to the agricultural state, we find that their most distinguished heroes and demigods were sportsmen and hunters, whose exploits, although subsequently dressed up in fable by the poets, had doubtless, in most instances, a basis of fact. Every nation has its Nimrod ; nor need we doubt that there must have been some foundation for the marvellous adventures recorded of Orion, Apollo, Hercules, and other monster-destroyers, if we recollect that the fossil remains of those gigantic quadrupeds, the mammoth and the megalonix, establish the fact that the earth was formerly infested with terrible animals whose races have now become extinct, and whose existence was once deemed as fabulous as we now deem the legendary labours of Hercules. This potent sportsman, and others of the same stamp, seem to have been the knights-errant of the early ages, who wandered about the world tilting at dragons, minotaurs, and similar culprits, and to whom the honour of deification was awarded by the grateful people delivered from such formidable ravagers. Poetry soon invested their achievements with fictitious embellishments ; a circumstance almost necessary to the success of any narrative, when the world was in its childhood, and readers possessing the taste of children, who always find simple truth insipid, required to be stimulated by the marvellous and the supernatural. Of such puerilities we find an abundant supply in the nonage of our own literature. Numerous troops of dragons survived the heroic ages, seeking every opportunity of attacking holy hermits and pious wanderers, if we are to believe the legends of the saints, whose commentators indignantly reject any spiritual interpretation of these desperate conflicts, and insist that every devout champion thus assailed maintained a not less perilous and

ANCIENT AND MODERN. 17

triumphant battle than did the doughty Saint George. The celebrated Moore, of Moore Hall, appears to have been the last of our British sportsmen who was so fortunate as to encounter a bona-fide dragon. In the dun cow hunted down and killed by Guy Earl of Warwick we have an imitation, although but a sorry one, of Theseus and his minotaur ; while the Laidly Worm, of ballad renown, presents us a serpent, inferior doubtless to the Pythian monster slain by the darts of Apollo, although sufficiently formidable to have conferred no mean celebrity on its destroyer.

A certain degree of rudeness, and not unfrequently of coarseness and cruelty, characterizes all the amusements of remote antiquity, which, being unrefined by any intellectual mixture, were chiefly calculated to display and invigorate the bodily qualities of the parties who engaged in them. Many of their pastimes were but imitations of the different military exercises ; and though vaulting, racing, wrestling, throwing the bar or the quoit, and cudgel-playing might not be directly referable to this object, they conduced to it collaterally by strengthening the body, inuring it to fatigue, and preparing it for war, which in such barbarous times was considered the paramount business of life. Strength and courage, the sole constituents of a hero, were then exercised without mercy in the field of battle, and imparted a touch of ferocity even to those nominally amicable contests that were celebrated on days of festival. Hunting and field-sports^ moreover, which at this early epoch were so widely pursued, and which in all ages retain the same character of cruelty, must have stamped upon the general miud a savageness that could scarcely fail to betray itself in the hours of pastinae and relaxation. What indeed can be expected from the diversions of a rude untutored people, but that they should evince manifest traits of violence and barbarism, even where they do not degenerate into actual brutality 1

Such is the character of the earliest games recorded in history, whether fabulous or authentic. In the sports of the Argonauts, after their return, Cycnus, the son of Mars, killed Diodotus, and was himself slain by Hercules. The games described in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, the eighth of the Odyssey, and by Virgil in the fifth book of the iEneid, are mere struggles of bodily strength and skill, B2 frequently marked by dangerous violence, and always unrelieved by any intellectual competition. The game of the cestus, or loaded gauntlet, a murderous weapon, was in high favour with the heroes and demigods. Amycus, king of the Bebrycians, compelled all strangers who touched upon his coast to try their skill in managing this rude instrument, which proved fatal to most of those who accepted his friendly challenge ; but the royal athlete was at length defeated at his own favourite pastime, and slain by Pollux. In a more advanced stage of civilization, however, after wealth and luxuiy had been introduced — when there were whole classes of unemploj'^ed men and women who had as yet no resource in literary pursuits, and who eagerly sought relief from the tedium of inoccupation — we may presume a variety of games and amusements to have been invented. These, as they were intended for people averse from any violent exercise or fatigue, would only call the powers of the body into a gentle exercise, calculated for the purposes of health ; while others, wholly sedentary in their nature, would address themselves more or less to the faculties of the mind. This second stage, by making the intellect participate with the body and the senses in our amusements, not only gave an immediate exaltation to their character, but prepared the way for those subsequent meliorations which, under the influence of the diffusion of knowledge occasioned by the discovery of printing, have been gradually refining, elevating, and humanizing our diversions. It must be confessed that in England they still retain many traits of barbarism which have long since fallen into desuetude with our more polished neighbours of the continent ; but at the same time it should be remembered that the Corinthian classes, who in the days of Queen Elizabeth flocked to bull, bear, badger, ape baitings, and other exhibitions equally cruel and ruffianly, would be now held utterly disgraced, at least in the estimation of real gentlemen, by participating in such low-lived sports. The charms of music, of the drama, of literature, of social meetings that combine " the feast of reason with the flow of soul ;" all those pursuits, in short, wherein the pleasures of sense are made subservient to the gratifications of the mind — these are the amusements alone worthy of rational people, and these receive the especial patronage of the English gentry.

OF THE ANCIENT JEW^ 19

In the present hasty summary it is not our purpose to notice the gradations by which this striking improvement has been effected, nor shall we point out what yet remains to be accomplished, in order to perfectionate the manners of the age with reference to its amusements. Hints, however, upon both these points may incidentally be given in the course of the following little work, to which we shall now proceed, only premising that although we shall briefly discuss some of the sports and diversions of ancient times and foreign nations, we shall not treat the subject as if we were writing for professed antiquaries, but rather in a popular and anecdotical manner ; and that it will be the chief object of our inquiries to record and elucidate the pastimes which at various periods have been prevalent in our own country.

CHAPTER II. Festivals^ Games, and Amusements of the Ancient Jews

" There, take thy pastime and do what thou wilt, hut sin not by proud Bpeech."— JSccZ. xxxii. 12.

"Now, therefore, see that thou make a copy of these things."

1 Mace. xi. 37.

As the Jews are the earliest nation of whom we have any authentic records, they are entitled to our first attention in the following inquiries. From their warlike character, the theocratical form of their government, their stern fanaticism, and that stubborn intolerance of all foreign customs which led them to repudiate with loathing the sports and pastimes of the gentiles, it has been concluded by many that they were averse from public shows, or social amusement of any description. This is but the repetition of an old charge adduced against them by their Roman conquerors ; but instead of inferring such an anomaly in the history of the human race as that a whole people should reject the occasional recreations which our common nature imperatively requires, it would have been more judicious to sur-

20 festi\!;a.ls, games, and amusements

mise that although they differed in these respects, as iit every thing else, from the surrounding nations, they must have had some diversions peculiar to themselves. In inquiring into their nature it will be seen that they were of a loftier character and even of more frequent occurrence than those of the Pagans, to which they scarcely bore more resemblance than to the pastimes of the existing generation.

Game-laws, that remnant of a barbarous age which forms the grossest outrage upon modem civilization, were unknown to the Israelites : whatever they found in their fields they might without scruple consider as their property, and hunt, catch, or kill as they chose, with no other restriction upon this common and natural right than such as was imposed hy the limitations of the seventh year. Whatever grew in that year on the fallow land was for the game,* which was then to be left umnolested. From the dense population, and the scarcity of cover in Palestine, it is probable, notwithstanding this measure for its preservation, that among a nation of farmers, all equally licensed for its destruction, it would soon become too scarce to afford amusement in its pursuit. Certain it is that field-sports, in the ordinary acceptation of that term, seem to have been little practised by the ancient Jews. Some of the common objects of the chase, such for instance as the hare, being pronounced unclean by the law, and placed among the prohibited meats, could not be eaten, although they might be destroyed as depredators. From the expression of Moses, that oxen, sheep, and goats throughout Palestine might be eaten even as the hart and the roe, we may conclude that these latter animals furnished the chief prey of the sportsman. The Jewish legislator, however, gives no ordinance for the regulation of the chase, nor do his writings afford any clew by which his intentions in this respect can be divined. Perhaps he considered the matter too trifling to deserve special regulation : perhaps he held it better adapted for local poUcy than for any general law, except that of the sabbatical year.

Anxiety to prevent the extirpation of the game, combined with that humanity towards animals which forms so prominent and honourable a feature of the Mosaic law,

OF THE ANCIENT JEWS. 2i

dictated, however, several minor directions not altogether irrelevant to this point. It is the command of Moses, that if a person find a bird's nest in the way, whether in a tree or on the ground, though he may take the eggs or the young, he shall not take the mother, but always allow her to escape. From analogy we might perhaps infer that no one durst kill the hind either when pregnant or when suckling the fawn. Both these rules are observed by modern sportsmen as necessary for the renewal of the game ; but as there was no privileged class among the Jews interested in preserving it for their own amusement ; as they were, on the contrary, mostly farmers who would be benefited by its extinction, we may safely conclude that if it did not altogether disappear, it soon became too scarce to allow the existence of such a character as a mere sportsman : an inference supported by the general silence of the Bible upon this subject.

A law so delicate in its humane injunctions, so averse even from an appearance of cruelty, that it forbade the Jews from seething the kid in its mother's milk,* would of course be understood even without any express injunction, as prohibitory of horse-racing, the bating of beasts, animal combats, and similar barbarous pastimes. Still more imperatively would it be held to interdict those savage sports where human beings destroyed one another for the gratification of a brutal populace. Gladiatorial games and the brutalizing scenes of the arena were abhorred by the Jews, not only as infractions of their peculiar law, but as being utterly repugnant to the common law of nature. The struggle of the twenty- four combatants, whom Abnet and Joab caused to play before them until they were all unnaturally murdered, bears some resemblance, indeed, to a gladiatorial combat ; but as it occurred in the presence of two hostile armies, it should rather perhaps be viewed as a challenge between an equal number of champions selected from the hostile ranks. From arts and literature the early Hebrews appear to have derived no amusement whatever. Owing to a mistaken interpretation of the decalogue, they held statuary and painting to be flagrant offences in the sight of the Lord, as having an idolatrous tendency. No theatre, no circus, no hippodrome, no gallery, nor odeum, was to be

• This law, though doubtless calculated to prevent cruelty, bore reference chiefly to a gross and idolatrous practice among the Canaanites.

found within the walls of Jerusalem or in the whole terri' tory of Palestine ; until in the latter days of the nation, when the corruption, degeneracy, and neglect of every sacred injunction that disgraced the reign of Herod led them to adopt many of the heathen practices, and piepared the way for the final downfall of the people.

In what then, it may be asked, consisted the sports and pastimes of the Jews, since they refused, with such an inflexible obstinacy, to adopt those of other nations, and do not appear to have possessed any public shows or amusements of their own 1 It will not be difficult to answer this question, if we recollect that as religion was the source of all their institutions, and the observance of its injunctions the chief public duty they had to perform, they must have derived from it their pleasures as well as their occupations. The sacred ceremonies which, exclusively of the pomp of sacrifice, the perfume of rich odours, and a stately display of gorgeously-attired processionists in the courts of their venerated temple, and in the presence of a whole assembled people, combined the attractions of male and female dancers with all the enchantments of the most exquisite musicians and singers, were not only incomparably more grand, imposing, and magnificent, as a mere spectacle, than any theatrical exhibition that the world could produce, but appealed to the heart while they delighted the eye, gratified the soul as well as the sense, awakened feelings of patriotism as well as of religion, and by uniting the splendours of earth to the glorious hopes of heaven, constituted a union of fascinations which no sensitive or pious Jew could have contemplated without an ecstasy of delight. Well might the people of the liord, whose highest duties were thus enlivened and sweetened by a public festival, and whose pleasures were sanctified and exalted by religious associations, look down with contempt on the cruel sports and vulgar pastimes of the heathen. So long as the Hebrew people retained their attachment to their religion, they remained satisfied with the festivals and stately celebrations that it afforded ; and not until all classes were desecrated by a general impiety, did they consent to adopt the games and amusements of their Roman conquerors. This innovation seems to have been first openly practised in the time of the Maccabees, when Jason, a Hellenised Jew, having