Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 9 to run Poins: 'I couldgive a thousand pounds I could run as fast as thou canst,' says the stout knight. In the Third Part of ' Henry VI.,' Act II., Scene 3, we have another allusion to foot-racing: Forspentwith toilas runners witha race, I lay medown a little whileto breathe. We are, however, anticipating, for there is evidence nearly a century before Shakespeare of the fondness of the common people for athletic sports. Strutt quotes the following lines from Barclay's' Eclogues,' first published in 1508. A shepherd says : I canboth hurleand sling, I runne, I wrestle, I can well throwethe barre, No shepherd throweththe axeltreesofarre ; If I weremerry, I could wellleape and spring, I werea man mete to serve a prince or king. A very curious piece of information given in Russell's ' His­ tory of Guildford' has a bearing on the sports of the sixteenth century. In a certain lawcase to decide in 1597 the title to a field near the town, one John Durich, gentleman, figuring as ' the most ancient inhabitant,' who is common in such trials, said that he had known the ground for fifty years,and whena scholar at the Free School did ' runne there and playat cricket.' The mostadmirable description, however, of the popular sports of the sixteenth century is that often quoted from, the work of the younger Randel Holme or Holmes, one of the wandering minstrels and merry-makers of the North country. Speaking, it is believed,of the men of Lancashire, in lines which show him to be better as a sportsman than as a poet, he says : Anythey dare challengefor to throw the sledge. To jumpor leape overa ditch or hedge, To wrastle, playat stoole-ball or to runne. To pitche the barre or to shooteof a gunne, 5 To play at loggets, nineholes or ten pinnes, To trie it out at football bythe shinnes; At ticke-tacke, sawnody, mawand ruffe, At hot cockles,leap frogge and blind man'sbuffe.