the festival. And according to Notes and Queries, 5th s., vol. xii. p. 456, "the last bull-baiting in Rochdale (Lancashire) took place in 18 19, when seven people were killed in consequence of the falling in of the river wall. The baiting was performed in the bed of the shallow river (the Roche) in the centre of the town."
To return from this digression, however, J. R. P. states in Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. ii., p. 187, in a letter on Irishmen indulging in the game on Sunday, that when he was a boy football was commonly played on Sunday morning before church-time in a village in the West of England, and that the church-piece was the chosen ground for it.
J. G., the author of a paper in Jackson's Brigg Annual, 1895, entitled Lincolnshire Agricultural Sketches, also says that at the old-fashioned village-feast—usually held, it is to be remembered, on the day sacred to the saint to whom the parish-church was dedicated—it used to be customary for boys to play cricket "with bats of various sizes, with a ball of rags tightly tied with string, and with extemporized wickets, and a football, almost solid, was kicked by youths."
According to Hone,[1] who quotes from Fosbroke's Dictionary of Antiquities, ball-play was formerly practised in churches at Easter, a statement parallel with what is said by Laisnel de la Salle[2] and Emile Souvestre[3] in writing of games connected with sun-worship in France.
A Florentine sport which appears to have been similar to the "hood-game" and its French analogues is described in the Gentleman's Magazine Library: English Traditions and Foreign Customs, p. 244; and contests of the same nature would seem to have been known to the Vikings.[4]
- ↑ Every-Day Book, vol. i., p. 436.
- ↑ "Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France, 1875, vol. i., pp. 86, 87, 88.
- ↑ Derniers Bretons, 1854, p. 125.
- ↑ P. du Chaillu, The Viking Age, vol. ii., p. 375. R. Keyser, The Private Life of the Old Northmen, translated by the Rev. M. R. Barnard, 1868, p. 150.
