Athletics and Football (extract)

"22 ATHLETICS of the sport of pedestrianismand its regularpaid exponents, it maybe advisable to turn aside for the present, to show howfar the nation still continued to indulge in running, jumping, and weight-throwing at country fairs and festivals. The Puritans had apparently succeeded in putting a stop to Sunday athletic meetings, but at the fairs and wakes the same sports went on as long as these fairshad any existence; whilemany of them, indeed, continued in one shape or another until they were re­ placed by the athletic meetingwhich is now almost invariably an annual affair in every country town. We have seen that, up to the time of Burton, the old country sports flourished with undiminished vigour. It is abundantly clear that they survived the Rebellion both in townand country. Stow, in his ' Survey of London,' published in 1690, after quoting FitzStephen, says that the exercises mentioned by him have ' lasted to our time.' Strype, who published in 1720 another editionof Stow'sSurvey, mentions ' pitching the bar ' amongst the pursuits of the lower classes of his day in London ; whilea later writer, Maitland, in his ' History of London,' published in 1739, a l so describes foot­ races and leaping matches amongst the amusementsof the lower classes. A paper in the ' Spectator' tells the same tale as Strype and Maitland—that by the beginning of the eighteenth century athletic pastimes were considered low-class sports. In No. 161 of the second volume of the ' Spectator,'Addison wrotea paper, professingto come froma country correspondent in the West of England, describing a ' CountryWake, whichin most parts of England is the eve-feast of the Dedication of our Churches.' As a matter of fact, Addison is known to have been describing a festival whichhe had seen at Bath. The green, he says, was coveredwith a promiscuousmultitude of all agesand both sexes. 'The wholecompanywerein their holidayclothes, and divided into several parties, all of them endeavouring to show themselves in those exerciseswherein they excelled.' There was in one place a ring of cudgel-players, in another a football match, in another a ring of wrestlers. The prize for the winnersof these competitions wasa hat, ' which is always