Athletics and Football (extract)

IO ATHLETICS To drinkthe halferpottes odreale atht e wholecanne, 10 To playat chesseor pueor inkehorne, To daunce mthoerris, playt barleybreake, At al exploiteas mancan think osrpeake, At shove-groate, venter point andcross anpdile, At 'beshrevv him that'sthe lastat any stile,' 15 At leapinge oaveCr hristmasbonfire. Or at the drawing dame out of the myre, At shoote-cocke,Gregory, stoolball and wh t not. Pick point,oppe ansdcourge mtoake himholt. It wouldrequire the length ofan essayto explainall the above sports, many of whichare 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. Prob­ ably, 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 manyother well-knownpastimes were common. But for our purposesthe verses are more useful as showing howthe different forms of athletic sport were beginning to be systematised. In line 1 we haveThrowing 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 witha 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 extremumscabies'). A party of lads are together, and one suddenly starts off without any warningto run to a mark, which he names; the others join in and race to the mark. The last in pays a forfeitor 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 commonpractice 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