Any they dare challenge for to throw the sledge, To jump or leape over a ditch or hedge, To wrastle, play at stoole-ball or to runne, To pitche the barre or to shoote of a gunne, 5 To play at loggets, nine holes or ten pinnes, To trie it out at football by the shinnes; At ticke-tacke, saw nody, maw and ruffe, At hot cockles, leap frogge and blind man's buffe,

To drink the halfer pottes or deale at the whole canne,

10 To play at chesse or pue or inkehorne,

To daunce the morris, play at barley breake, At al exploites a man can think or speake, At shove-groate, venter point and cross and pile, At ' beshrew him that's the last at any stile,'

15 At leapinge over a Christmas bonfire, Or at the drawing dame out of the myre, At shoote-cocke, Gregory, stoolball and what not, Pick point, toppe and scourge to make him holt.

It would require the length of an essay to explain all the above sports, many of which are still familiar under different names. 'Stool-ball' is the rudimentary form of cricket, the one player defending the stool while the other threw the ball at it. Probably, however, in one of the two lines in which 'stool-ball' is mentioned, it is a mistake for 'stow-ball' or golf. It is evident, therefore, that in the sixteenth century football and many other well-known pastimes were common. But for our purposes the verses are more useful as showing how the different forms of athletic sport were beginning to be systematised. In line I we have Throwing the Hammer, in line 2 the Long Jump and the High Jump, in line 3 running, and in line 4 'pitching' or 'putting' the weight, as distinct from 'throwing' the hammer with a sling round the head. Line 14 also describes a very curious kind of sprint-racing, which, we believe, was also practised by Roman schoolboys ('occupet extremum scabies'). A party of lads are together, and one suddenly starts off without any warning to run to a mark, which he names; the others join in and race to the mark. The last in pays a forfeit or gets a kick, as the case may be.

It is one of the best tests of speed and quickness in starting, and is much like the common practice of modern sprinters of 'taking each other on at starts,' one starting when he likes and the other following him as best he can.

It is clear enough, then, that the common people had their regular athletic sports in the Elizabethan age, but that at this time people of fashion took little part in them. Pageants, processions, and masques were the amusements of Elizabeth's court, or bear-baitings or bull-baitings, and last, but not least, dramatic exhibitions. Nowhere in Robert Laneham's long account of the levels at Kenilworth, nor in Nichol's account of the ' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth,' are there, as far as we are aware, any allusions to pedestrian sports. In the succeeding reign the fashion turned again, as we shall presently see. Curiously enough, however, our best notion of the universal popularity amongst the lower classes of different forms of athletic sport is gathered from the Puritan writers, who were the bitter opponents of such pastimes. The Puritans, however, at the first did not oppose the sports themselves so much as the occasions upon which they were practised. What these occasions were is abundantly clear. The ordinary times for running, leaping, football and such like pastimes were Sundays and Church festivals, and the usual arena the churchyard; the greater and more uproarious festivities took place on the last days of the country fairs.

The fairs, as being the more important, perhaps deserve attention first. The greater part of the trading of the country in the Elizabethan age was conducted by means of the fairs; horses, cattle, and all necessaries for the season were bought at them. In Harrison's 'Description of England,' published at this time, a list is given of the 'more important' fairs, which mentions three or four hundred of these gatherings. It is scarcely to be wondered at, by those who know the peculiar faculty of the Englishman to combine business with sport, that when the business was over, or even before, sporting competitions should follow, the whole affair concluding, as the Puritan writers assert (and probably with some truth), with general orgies of intoxication and riot. Of the nature of the sports at these fairs, which, doubtless, continued in much the same form as long as the fairs themselves were held, we shall have to give some further account afterwards, but running, jumping, and weight-putting seem to have been invariable features of the programme. The Puritans, however, did their best to suppress all these sports entirely.

John Northbrooke, writing as early as 1577, and demanding a Government supervision of fairs, alludes to the festivals in the following complimentary terms: 'There would not be so many loytering idle persons, ruffians, blasphemers, swingebuck-lers, tossepottes, etc. etc.' (there is a crescendo of abuse, and the extract must of necessity be Bowdlerised) 'if these dunghills and filth in commonweales were removed.' Stubbs, another Puritan writer, the author of the 'Anatomie of Abuses,' expresses himself against the fairs in equally strong terms. His attitude to sport in general may be gathered from the fact of his speaking of 'tennise, bowles, and such like fooleries.' If the fairs, however, were 'dunghills,' the practice of sports at the wakes, or Church festivals, and on ordinary Sundays, was still more shocking to the reformers. In 1570 one of them paraphrased into English, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, the foreign work of one Kirchmaier, who, as he wrote in Latin, adopted the name of Naogeorgus. The translator, Barnabe Googe, says of the people on Sundays:

Now when their dinner once is done, and that they well have fed, To play they go, to casting of the stone, to runne or shoote, To toss the light and windy ball aloft with hande or foote. Some others trie their skill in gonnes, some wrastell all the day And some to schoole of fence do goe to gaze upon the play.