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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

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

people on the forehead in the form of a cross, affording them withal this wholesome admonition, "Memento, homo, quòd pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris," remember, O man, that thou art dust, and to dust shalt return.-The ashes thus used were made of the palms consecrated the Sunday twelvemonth before, and this ceremony, though in a modified form, survived the first shock of the Reformation, not being abandoned till about the year 1547-8, when, as Stow tells us, "the Wednesday following, commonly called Ash-Wednesday, the use of giving ashes in the church was also left throughout the whole citie of London." Prior to that time it had formed one of the ordinances of the Reformed Church.

At one period, after this solemn service the people used to renew some of their carneval fooleries, amongst which throwing at the Jack-a-Lent, as they had previously done at the Shrove-tide cock, was one of the principal. This Jack-a-Lent was a puppet, and was likely enough to have been a substitute for the older custom of pelting the Jews with stones, which had at one time prevailed to mark the popular abhorence of their share in the crucifixion. As to the practice itself, our old dramatists abound in allusions to it, but it stands in no need of explanation. The fast obtained its name of lent from the season of the year, in which it was celebrated, lent, or lenten, in the old Saxon signifying "spring," the time when the days began to lengthen-lengthen-tide-which word has been corrupted into lenten, and lent.

Using the poet's privilege of ending tragedy with a comic epilogue, I shall now conclude this account of February with Taylor's humorous derivation of the word Lent; it is in a style that must have delighted Dean Swift had it ever come under his notice. "Now for

the name and beginning of Lent," he says, "the word Lent doth signify a thing borrowed, for except a thing be borrowed how is it lent? and being lent, it follows by consequence that it was borrowed. But from whom it was so free of the loan of this Lent, that would be known.

'First then you must conceive that the true etimology, or ancient name of this Lent is lantide, which being anagrammatized is Landit, for the chief provision that he is furnished withal being fish, and such sea-faring fare, that except he land it, there will be but cold takings in the fish-markets, for Jack-a-Lent hath no society, affinity, or propinquity with flesh and blood, and by reason of his leanness—as Nymshay, an ancient Utopian philosopher, declares in his treatise of the Antiquity of ginger-bread, (Lib. 7. Pag. 30,000) he should have been a footman."

This grave banter fully equals the Dean's derivation of Alexander the Great from all-eggs under the grate, for which, according to him, the world's conqueror had a singular predilection.

* "Alexander the Great was very fond of eggs roasted in hot ashes. As soon as his cooks heard he was come home to dinner or supper, they called aloud to their under-officers,-all eggs under the grate, which repeated every day at noon and evening, made strangers think it was his real name, and therefore gave him no other, and posterity has been ever since under the same delusion."Swift's Works, vol. xiv.

Nothing came amiss to Swift in the way of a joke, however coarse or foolish; but it must be owned that the etymologists are often quite as ridiculous in earnest, as he is here in jest.

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