Jerrold's Illuminated Magazine has a good article on " England
sixty years ago." It does not exhibit such a scene of savage debauchery as the account of Ireland at the same period lately given by the Dublin University Maga- zine; but the picture is sufficiently unpleasiog to make one confess that, al= though a crowded population and other causes have destroyed the more harm- less gayeties of Mayday, the change has effected a vast deal of good. The brutal sports of bull-baiting, bear-baiting, badger-baiting, cock-shying, (on Shrove Tuesday,) and cock-fighting, are mostly extinct. Some other sports, characteristic of the past, to which our present extracts shall be confined, are not so univer- sally known. Plough Monday is abolished. " It was an ancient festival of Ceres, I believe, which had gradually degenerated into an agrarian revolt. An enormous plough, decorated with flowers, ribands, and other trappings, was drawn by three or four hundred young men similarly ornamented, preceded by a band of what what was then called music ! and accompanied by an enormous crowd of men, women, and children, with full-grown boys and girls, hooting, shouting, screaming, dancing tumultuously, like so many drunken bacchanals, and uttering oaths and obscenities which would not in the present day be tolerated in the regions of St. Giles's and the Mint. As they approached the house a messenger was sent on to know what ransom would be given: if this were refused altogether, they proceeded to plough up the front of the house. Walls, railings, posts, trees of considerable size, could not for a moment resist the ponderous machine, which, dragged by chains, tore its way through the ground to a great depth, leaving devastation behind it. A grass plat was destroyed, vases broken, shrubs torn up by the roots or cut off close to the ground, and a scene remained as if a mine had been sprung on the spot. If a sum below their estimate of their rights,' as they termed them, was given, they still proceeded to do considerable raise:lief, but did not wreak full vengeance. It was only on the payment of their arbitrary demand, with- out hesitation or resistance, that they passed by without injuring any thing.. For the house of a gentleman this black mail was, I believe, two or three pounds; and it was graduated down to a shilling or two from the poorest labourer. The regular plough-team was always composed of persons from s distance; and those inhabitants of the district who could have resisted the invasion, had they been so inclined, were themselves gone to distant places on a similar errand. The money thus obtained was expended in profligacy and de- bauchery, little less extravagant than that of the followers of Juggernaut."
Upon some estates in Galway, a sort of feudal system is kept up, of which the people loudly complain, although for their own sake they submit to it. It is a very common condition annexed to the tenure of small farms, that the tenant shall leave his own business, at any time that he may be called upon, to plough, cart, cut turf, reap, mow, or dig, for the landlord; and the hire which he receives for these services is considerably below the ordinary rate of wages. Thus, a shilling is the payment allowed by such contracts for a horse with a man to lead it ; and they must both " find themselves." That is to say, the horse must be fed, and the man too, and their labour repaid, out of that one splendid shilling. Refusal, or neglect to comply with such requisitions, is punished by a heavy fine, which is rigidly exacted. The labour of a man with- out a horse is supposed to be sufficiently requited with sixpence; and I saw a number of men saving the harvest of a noble Lord, who were to receive that mighty sum, without the addition (as they expressed it) of "bite or sup."— Tales Magazine.
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