THE VILLAGE AT PLAY.
LAST summer's outbreak of " pageantitis " demonstrated anew the humiliating truth that almost any age in our history is more picturesque from a. spectacular point of view than our own, the 'crude barbarian" in woad and skins figuring on the pageant stage from which that product of high civilisation, the twentieth-century man in twentieth- century garb, is rigorously excluded. Nor may we lay to our souls the flattering unction that familiarity is responsible for the contempt thus displayed towards our sartorial efforts.. Bygone costumes and usages owe the fascination they wield over us not merely to the glamour of the past. There was an elegant leisure, a colour and richness, about English life before steam and electricity quickened its pace to the present breathless rush. These characteristics, which reached high- water mark during the Elizabethan era, overflowed, not into painting and sculpture, as elsewhere, but into literature, domestic architecture, and a thousand channels of everyday existence. The backwash of the wave touched even the lower classes, lending their amusements a variety and exuberance that distinguish them no longer. The very names of some of those forgotten pastimes breathe a rural charm ; such are "
barley-break" and "cherry-pit," of the latter of which the drunken philosopher declared that "it is not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with the devil." The former, somewhat analogous to "Tom Tiddler's Ground," was a favourite Sunday afternoon and holiday game. It was played by three couples, a lad and a lass, who stood in as many circles roughly drawn on the turf. The pair in the centre plot, which was called "hell," endeavoured to catch one of the other couples as they rushed through from side to side, and if successful, exchanged places with their prisoners. With " barley-break " and "cherry-pit" has vanished "Plough Monday," the next after Twelfth Day, when the ploughmen drew their plough around the village, gathering money that later they spent in rustic revels, in feasting, drinking, and dancing, amid the gambols of hobby-horses and clowns. The modern fair with its switchback, its circus shows, its brazen band or blaring steam-organ, has superseded the Whitaun morris-dances ; the Church wake is represented by the village feast, with its few booths and merry-go-rounds on the green. The maypole sports have shrunk to some half- dozen children who play truant from school to parade the parish tricked out in parti-coloured streamers and masks that have not the merit of prettiness and are not sufficiently ugly to be comic. Of the "Heathen Company" that on high days and holidays marched to church under the banner of the Lord of Misrule, "their pipers piping, their drummers thundering, their stumps dancing, the bells on their legs jingling, their handkerchiefs swinging about their beads like madmen, their hobby-horses skirmishing among the throng," none are left save a remnant of the old-fashioned mummers who survive here and there among the Wessex villages. One of the present writer's earliest recollections is that of being awakened in what seemed the dead of night—in reality it was between eight and nine o'clock—of being wrapped in blankets and carried downstairs to see the mummers. Dreamy and confused, invested with a halo of wonder, mystery, and delight, those rare moments of dissipa- tion come back,—the winter darkness outside ; the crowd of quaintly dressed men whose lanterns shed a sickly, yellowish, wavering light over the motley figures ; "King George," recognised by the crown above his headgear; the doctor in his tall white hat; "Tinker Mary," a veritable daughter of the plough ; and, looming spectral through the gloom, the white horse, a real flesh-and-blood animal of gaunt and ancient frame. The combat, the hero's fall—" King Jame is 'ounded to the heart "—stirred to their depths our childish feelings, which were scarcely to be soothed by his subsequent miraculous recovery, and by the songs and dances that brought the pro- ceedings to a close.
The white horse recalls a custom that prevailed twenty years ago, and perhaps may still do so, in a part of Oxfordshire. On "Oak-hackle Day," thirty to forty young men, trained "runners," would don strange costumes prepared for the occasion, would powder their faces and decorate their persons with oak-leaves and nettles. A favourite method of using the latter was to cut out the crown of a round felt hat and fill in the space with them. Thus arrayed, the youths would run throughout the district, making a "tower of all the villages round," to quote the local authority for this description, who himself took part in the fun. With them they led "the powdered pony," which was whitened by artificial means, though to what use he was put the chronicler omitted to state. The party sang, danced, and "played music of their own on a torrablish " string band, the only tunes the country- man could recognise being "God Save" and "Hearts of Oak." "The runners gathered pounds, and the boys, who could not run so far or so fast, cut across country and joined the company for the merry-come-up at the place where they had started from." "Oak-hackle Day" was observed in this locality as a festival, the lads generally, marking it by the wearing of nettles in their hats, the stems being tied round with string to make them stand upright. In Oxford City the town boys have a recognised rite and formula for May 29th. The latter consists of the following cryptic utterance : " Shick- shack-monkey-powder, and nettles after four," the meaning of which is that until noon a " shick-shack " or oak-leaf is to be worn in the buttonhole ; it is then replaced by "monkey- powder," which the dialect dictionary explains to be "a leaf of the ash-tree worn in the afternoon of Royal Oak Day." " After four" o'clock, any boy who omits to place a nettle conspicuously about his person is liable "to be stung by all the other nettles." " Shick-shack Day" is observed in various parts of England, a writer in Notes and Queries some years ago giving an account of how the boys of the College School, Gloucester, invariably hooted and pinched those of their com- panions who did not provide themselves on that date with an oak-leaf. It may be of interest to note that Bailey's Dictionary gives under "Shack "—" In Norfolk, the liberty of Common for hogs in all men's Grounds from the end of Harvest till Seed- time"; and under "Shacking "—" The season when the Mast is ripe."
November Sth is still commemorated by the youth of the village, though Guy Fawkes seldom figures in the celebrations, which tend more and more to become a vehicle for the expres- sion of public disapproval, or for the gratification of a private grudge. If a "small tradesman" exert what the defaulting debtor chooses to consider undue pressure in order to recover moneys for which the creditor may have waited long and patiently; if a householder object to pilferers entering his premises and helping themselves to what they fancy ; if an employer of labour make himself obnoxious to a section of the villagers, his—or her—effigy will of a surety be given the place of dishonour on Guy Fawkes Day. In one instance known to the writer, a farmer who acted as manager to the aged widow of a well-to-do agriculturist thought fit to cut off the supply of beer with which the man about the house was surreptitiously treating his friends at his mistress's expense. For this criminal offence the farmer and his housekeeper were burnt with every insult the rustic mind could devise. The figures, mounted on a hand-cart, were drawn round the village to an accompaniment of shrieks, yells, and cat-calls ; they were then banged upon a • mock gibbet and were beaten to rags, the fragments being finally collected and burnt on the green. Neither age, sex, nor position is spared in such demonstrations, though one would have thought that they must be repugnant to the Englishman's love of fair play. Somewhat similar to this rough-and-ready method of injustice, and less reprehensible, seasoned also with a touch of humour, is the practice that prevails in some parts of Wessex of propping a woman's effigy outside the door of a notorious "scold," or fixing it in the branches of a tree near her window.
Among village games, cricket and football are still the most popular ; others of a more unconventional type also find favour on feast days and holidays. One that affords amuse- ment to players and spectators alike is a mop tournament, in which two men, grotesquely attired, their faces blacked or powdered, are mounted each on the shoulders of a comrade. From this unsteady perch the" knights" lunge at one another with mops that have been dipped in whitewash or " ruddle," every " hit " on the combatants' faces being greeted with roars of laughter. As may be expected, the " rounds " are brief, the staggering bearers not being able to sustain the weight of a full-grown man on their shoulders for more than a few minutes at a stretch. Another favourite game with the youths is that of "unicorn," which the boys may be seen practising in private that they may show to better advantage before the public. For this seven boys are needed to every team,—three, standing abreast, form the cart; harnessed in front of them, unicorn fashion, are three more. When the equipage is ready to start, the driver gathers the long reins in his hand, and standing on the shoulders of the" cart" sets the team in motion. A "unicorn" race, in which several sets of competitors are engaged, is an exquisitely funny sight, but of too short duration, since a driver who can keep his balance for twenty yards is considered to have acquitted himself brilliantly. "Jacob's Ladder" the writer has seen played (in Holland) by a company of Danes who called it " Sweet- hearting." When every lad, save one, has chosen his lass, the couples place themselves in column of two persons abreast, the girls behind each other, the men beside them. Facing the head of the line stands the partnerless youth, who claps his hands thrice. At the last signal, the bottom couple dart out, the lad to the right, the lass to the left, and endeavour to meet and join hands again before the unmated bunter can catch the girl. If he succeed, he takes his place with her at the head of the couples, and his rival is left to try his fortune in his turn. The tall, well-grown Danish girls ran like hares. The flying figures, the pounce of the captor, the triumph depicted in his face when he led his prize home, carried back the imagination to the days of the Vikings— when surely the game must have been invented—the" Winged Hats" who rode the waves and who won their brides, as they held them, by the right of might.
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