The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland

STRONG MENAND THEIR FEATS OF STRENGTH. 15 CHAPTER I. STRONG MEN AND THEIR FEATS OF STRENGTH. HROUGH history and tradition many accounts have been handed down to us of strong men, andthe wonderfulfeats of strength they performed. Yet most of these accounts are very unsatisfactory when critically examined. That the heroes whose feats are recorded made agreat impression on their con­ temporaries, andwere regarded as the champion strong menof their time, there is no doubt. The reputationthey enjoyed in their own time is of comparatively little interest to those ofthe present time, unless the feats on which their reputation rested can be brought into comparisonwith the feats ofmodern strong men. In every agethere hasbeen found a popular idea, tothe effect that the human race is steadily deteriorating physically. Most old men of the present time areready to maintain that in their youth there were stronger men than any to be met with now; they heard the same story from their fathers and grand­ fathers, and so on for countless generations, till the wonder is that the present generation contains anything but the merest THE HUMAN RACE NOT DEGENERATING.— If these upholders of past times andgenerations are asked on what grounds their belief rests theycan bring forwardnothing but vague traditions and unsupported assertions. Where, onthe other hand, facts are examined, these stubborn chiels all point the opposite way. When preparations were being made for the great Eglinton tournament in 1839, one of the difficulties to be surmounted was to find armour large nough for the degeneratedescendants of the great heroes of the middle ages. According to the opinions of those who bewail the physical fallingoff amongst modern men, the armour ofthe giants of former times should pigmies.