Athletics and Football (extract)

i6 ATHLETICS by Burton, the author of the ' Anatomyof Melancholy.' Bur­ ton's book wasnot published until 1660 ; but he had then been dead twentyyears,and had spent the twentyyears or so previous to his death in compilingthe work. If report be true, during the composition of the celebrated work he became so melan­ choly himself that nothing could extort a smile from him but listening to the ribaldry of the bargemen at Folly Lock, at Oxford; this specific never failed, it is said, to clear awayhis sadness for some time. His disposition, however, did not pre­ vent hisbeing a verykeen observer of the country sports. He points out clearly the pastimes both of the gentry and of the people : ' Ringing, bowling, shooting, playing with keel-pins, tronks, coits, pitching of bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, mustering, swimming, playing with wasters, foils,footballs, balowns, running at the quintain, and the like, are common recreations of the country folks; riding of great horses, running at rings, tilts and tournaments, horse-races and wild-goose chases, are disports of greater men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their fortunes.' He goes on to say that the country recreations take place at May-games,feasts, fairs, and wakes. This extract, backed by those we have already given, shows conclusively the universal prevalence of athletic sports in the early part of the seventeenth century. That athletic feats were performed even under the Puritan governmentwould seem to be the case if any reliance can be placedon the following pieceof information, whichis stated, in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' of 1797, to be taken from a con­ temporaryrecord. The wholeaccount, however,is so obviously absurd, that were it not amusing it could hardly deserve for any other reason to find a place in an historicalchapter. ' A butcher of Croydon' (says No. 147 of the 'Weekly Intelli gencer'), 'on December 1, 1653, ran twenty miles, from St. Albans to London, in less than an hour and a half,and the last four miles so gently that he seemed to meditate, and not to ensult on the conquest, but did make it rather a recreation than