"On Tuesday, the sports will be repeated; also on Wednesday, with the additional attraction of a smock-race by ladies. A main of cocks to be fought on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, for twenty guineas, and five guineas the byes, between the gentlemen of Manchester and Eccles. The wake to conclude with a fiddling-match by all the fiddlers that attend, for a piece of silver." Wakes are probably as ancient as the introduction of Christianity into this county, and were at first purely religious festivals. But in course of time, as the festivities were prolonged into night, the Legend of St John the Baptist says that the attendants "fell to lecherie and songes, dances, harping, piping, and also to glotony and sinne, and so turned holynesse to cursydnesse." In the reign of Elizabeth, wakes were in part suppressed, but were again allowed by James I. in his "Book of Sports." Since then they have been carried on under varied programmes; but even now—
"Tarts and custards, creams and cakes,
Are the junkets still at wakes;
Unto which the tribes resort,
Where the business is the sport."
