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the quintin,[1] and morris-dancing. And that there might be nothing wanting that these parts could afford, hither came the Coventry men, and acted the ancient play, long since used in that city, called Hock's -Tuesday, setting forth the destruction of the Canes in King Etheldred's time; with which the Queen was so well pleased, that she gave them a brace of bucks, and five marks in money, to bear the charges of a feast. Besides all this, he had upon the pool a Triton, riding on a Mermaid eighteen feet long; as also an Arion on a Dolphin, with rare; music. And to honour this entertain-
- ↑ Running at the quintin was a ludicrous kind of tilting, performed in the following manner: A post, as high as a man on horseback, was set upright in the ground; with an iron pivot on the top, on which turned a long horizontal beam, unequally divided. To the upright post was fixed the figure of a man; the horizontal beam representing his arms; the shortest end had a traget nearly covering the whole body, with a hole, in the shape of a heart, or a ring, cut in the middle of it; and the longest was armed with a wooden sword, or a bag of sand. Peasants, mounted on cart-horses, run lull tilt at this figure, and endeavoured to strike die heart with a pole made like a lance; if they succeeded, they were applauded ; but if they struck the shield instead of the heart, the short arm of the lever retiring brought round the wooden sword or the sand-bag with such velocity, as generally to unhorse the. awkward assailant. This amusement, somewhat diversified, was not long ago practised in Flanders, at their wakes and festivals, The revolving arms were placed vertically; the lower shewing the ring, whilst the upper one supported a vessel full of water, which emptying itself on the head of the unskilful filter, punished his want of dexterity with a severe ducking.——Beauties of British Antiquity.
