Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 27 abouts, &c., there was in the evening an athletic meeting. The events were, running, jumping,a wheelbarrowrace (blindfold), a sack race, and a greasy pole, and the prizeswere either hats or garments, or of an edible or potable nature. From inquiry it appeared that the annual meeting was ' older than anybody could recollect.' We have little doubt that it was as old as the foundation of the town itself,as all the wakes wereorigin­ ally festivalsof the foundation of the churches. We have thus far followed the history of rustic sports up to the present time, because there is no doubt that these meetings kept alive the athletic spirit throughout England, and each of them served as a nucleus for an athletic club and helped to create a centre when the modern revivalof athletic sports came about. We have also been obliged, in a certain way, to anti­ cipate matters, because through the eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth centuries there were twodistinct streams of athleticism, the country wakes and the professional pedes- trianism which began in time to rank as a branch of legitimate sport, in the same manner as the prize ring. We have seen that there has been a regular historyof pro­ fessionalpedestrianism ever since the Restoration, but it must not be supposed that both under the Merry Monarch and in the eighteenth century, given up, as it was, to wagering and betting of all kinds, there were no matches between amateurs. Thackeray, who knew the period he waswriting about in the 'Virginians,' and also understood something of the capacities ofthe human body for athletic purposes, tellsofa match between Harry Warrington and Lord March and Ruglen, who jumped for a wager. The Virginian wins with 21 ft, 3 in,, beating his lordship, whocould onlycover 18 ft, 6 in.; and Harry goes on in his letter to Virginiato state that he knew there was another in Virginia (Col, G, Washington) who could jump a foot more. Thackeray's correctness contrasts favourablywith that of other writers of this century, some of whom, like Wilkie Collins in his ' Manand Wife,' undertake to write of athletic feats without taking the trouble to acquire any knowledgeof them. Such