Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 25 pastimes.' Another correspondent of Hone's gives a similar account of Avingham fair in the North Country. After the dancingwasover, the sports began in the presenceof the mayor. Amongst the contests were ' foot-racingfor hats, handkerchiefs, and she-shirts. The several races run, and the prizes distri­ buted, they return to the last and gayest of their mirthful scenes, viz. evening dancing and drinking, finally departing " fu' blythe that night."' In the same book there is along account of ' Hungerford revel' in Wiltshire. The chief amuse­ ment at this festival was, of course, the cudgel-play which ' Tom Brown' has so welldescribed for us. Besides this, how­ ever, the festival included in 1826 the following programme : (1) Girls running for smocks; (2) Climbing the greasy pole for bacon; (3) Old women drinking hot tea for snuff; (4) Grinning through horse-collars; (5) Racing between old women for a pound of tea ; (6) Hunting a pig with a soaped tail; (7) Jumping in sacks for a cheese ; (8) Donkey racing. There was another revel, called the ' Peppard revel,' earlier in the year, and the ' Reading Mercury' of May 24, 1819, has an advertisementof the sports, promising eighteenpence to every manwho breaks a head at cudgel-play,and a shilling to every man who has his head broke. One of the most interesting communicationsin the ' Everyday Book' has reference to the North. A writer in 1826 regrets that in most of the great Northern townsthe 'wakes' are dyingout, 'although still held annually in nearlyall the parochial villagesof the North and Midlands.' The writer says, however, that in Sheffield (as we should naturallyexpect of this great home of pedestrianism) the ' wake' was still kept up. ' At Little Sheffield and in Broad- lane the zest of the annual festivity is heightened by ass-races, foot-races (masculine) for a hat, foot-races (feminine) for a chemise,and grinning matches.' Perhaps the most interesting extract from Hone to an athlete is his account of the ' Necton Guild ' in Norfolk, which was undoubtedly the first English athletic club. In 1817, Major Mason, of Necton, in Norfolk, determined to organise the local ' wake' into a regular athletic