games, and the mummings about Christmas. Barleybrake was an ancient rural game, described by Gifford as played by six persons, three of each sex, who were coupled by lot. A piece of ground was then chosen, and divided into three compartments, of which the middle one was called hell. The couple condemned to this division tried to catch the others, who advanced from the two extremities; if they succeeded, hell was filled by the couple excluded by pre-occupation from the other places. In this "catching," however, there was some difficulty, as the middle couple, hand in hand, were not to separate before they had succeeded, whilst the others must break hands whenever they find themselves hard pressed. When all had been taken in turn, the last couple were said to be in hell, and the game ended. There is a description of the game in a little tract called "Barley-breake, or a Warning for Wantons" (4to, Lond. 1607). This game would seem to have left its traces in a boys' game still played in the North of England (especially in the East Riding of Yorkshire), in which a couple link hands, and sally forth from home (the modern substitute for hell), shouting something like "Aggery, ag, ag, ag's gi'en warning," and trying to tick or touch with the free hand any of a number of boys running about separately. These latter try, by slipping behind the linked couple, and throwing their individual weight on the joined hands, to separate them, without being first touched or ticked; and if they sunder the couple, each of the severed ones has to bear a boy "home" on his back. Whoever is touched is condemned to replace the toucher in the linked couple. Shove-groat is a variety of the old game of shovel-board. A shilling or other smooth coin was placed on the extreme edge of the shovel-board, and propelled towards a mark

by a smart stroke with the palm of the hand. Sometimes a groat-piece was used, and in the present times a halfpenny; and the game of shove-halfpenny is mentioned in the Times of April 25, 1845, as then played by the lower orders. Taylor, the water-poet, states that in his time, the beginning of the seventeenth century, "Edward (VI.) shillings" were chiefly used at shove-board. Venter-point was a children's game of the sixteenth century, named but nowhere described. Cross and pile is the old name of what is now called "tossing," or "heads and tails," the coin now used being generally a halfpenny, of which the obverse or bust of the Queen is the "head," and the reverse, whether the figure of Britannia or the harp of the Irish halfpenny, or other device, is called the tail. The origin of the term "cross and pile" is not very clear. The cross, in form that of St George, its four arms of equal length, was the favourite form for the reverse of silver coins from the time of Henry III., and perhaps at one time facilitated the fourthing or farthing of the coin, i.e., the dividing it into four equal quarters. But what was the pile? Not the pellets, for they were always inserted in the angles between the arms of the cross. Not the legend or reading on the coin, for that was found both on obverse and reverse. It does not appear to be from the Latin pilus (the beard), or pilum (an arrow or spear). Yet it was clearly the opposite side of the coin to the cross side. Grafton records, that in 1249 an order was made to coin a silver groat, which was to have on one side the picture of the King's face (Henry III.), and on the other a cross extended to the edge. In 1304, the controller of the King's Exchequer, by order of the King's treasurer, sent to the treasurer for Ireland twenty-four stamps for coining money there, viz., "three piles with six crosses, for pennies; the same for half

pennies; and two piles, with four crosses, for farthings." This at least shows that "cross and pile" were terms for the opposite sides of coins. The next sport is appar

ently a foot-race to the next stile. Leaping over a Christmas bonfire appears to be a relic of the leaping through or over the bel-tain fires in honour of Bel or Baal, at various festivals. The name of the next game contains a misprint. It should be drawing dun out of the mire. Dun was a favourite name for horse or mare of that colour, to which the saying "Dun is the mouse" doubtless refers. "Dule upo' Dun," a Lancashire tradition, is anglice the devil upon the dun horse or mare. The rural game is described as played with a log of wood representing dun (the cart-horse), and a cry is raised that he is stuck in the mire. Two of the company advance either with or without ropes, to draw him out. They find themselves unable, call for help, and gradually the whole company take part, when dun is extricated of course; the fun consisting in the awkward and affected efforts of the rustics to lift the log, and sundry arch contrivances to let the ends of it fall on one another's toes. Chaucer and Ben Johnson have references to it. Shoot-cock is the same with our shuttlecock; was played by boys in the fourteenth century, and was a fashionable pastime among grown persons in the reign of James I. Gregory was a children's game of the sixteenth century. Stool-ball has been already noticed. Perhaps this second time it occurs in the verses it should be read stow-ball, which appears to have been a species of golf, and played with a golf-ball. Pick-point occurs in an enumeration of children's games in the sixteenth century. Top and scourge is simply the whipping-top, one of the most ancient of boys' pastimes, for it was in vogue amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans. Peg-top is a modern play.

BARLEY-BRAKE AND BUFF.

THIS game was formerly played in May. Randle Holme, the Chester antiquary, and heraldic deputy of Sir William Dugdale, mentions barley-brake as among the sports which prevailed in Lancashire, and which he thus records in doggerel from Rowland

"To play at chess, or pue and inkhorn,

To dance the morrice, play at barley-brake,
At all exploits a man can think and speak," &c.

Many of the games mentioned in his rude verses are now forgotten; but there is some reason to think that barley-brake still lingers in Lancashire and other counties under its more modern name of prison bars. It may be further observed that "Blindman's Buff" was formerly called "blende-bok," and has been supposed to be the same with the jul or yule-bok, the goat or stag of the Pagan Yule-tide. Rudbeck supposes this game to be a relic of the rites of Bacchus, who is pointed out by the name of Bocke; and he considers the hoodwinking, &c., of this game as a memorial of the bacchanalian orgies. From the Gothic celebration of these rites is perhaps to be deduced the Lancashire boggart, the name of an undefined sprite which has connected its name to Boggart Hole, in Pendle Forest (?), the scene of pseudo-witchcraft. The boggart is the terror of children; and when a horse takes fright at some object unobserved by its master, the vulgar opinion is that it has "seen th' boggart." Originally, the strange disguises worn by the principal mummer and representative of the Bock of Yule, have given rise to the superstition respecting a terrible sprite, the Bocker, which

becomes in the provincialism of Lancashire the boggart. Mummers and maskers were finally suppressed by a statute of Henry VIII., which awarded against them an imprisonment of three months, and a fine at the discretion of the justices; so that in England the game of blindman's buff, and probably the modern entertainment of the masquerade, are the only relics of the Bock of Yule.

CLITHEROE SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

"VILLAGE wakes," says Mr Wright, "rush-bearings, and other rude customs of antiquity, continue to be observed in this locality; besides the practice of dressing up two figures as the king and queen, something in the Guy Fawkes costume, and carrying them round the borough boundaries. The very objectionable custom of lifting or heaving is not yet extinct at Clitheroe; and, reprehensible in all ages, it must be doubly so when simplicity characterises the religious observances of so many Christian sects." Another writer thus describes these practices in 1784:—

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'Lifting was originally designed to represent our Saviour's resurrection. The men lift the women Easter Monday, and the women the men on Tuesday. One or more take hold of each leg, and one or more of each arm, near the body, and lift the person up into a horizontal position three times. It is a rude, indecent, and dangerous diversion, practised chiefly by the lower class of people. Our magistrates constantly prohibit it by the bellman, but it subsists at the end of the town; and the women have of late years converted it into a money job. I believe it is chiefly confined to these northern counties."