THE SPANISH-AMERICAN SPORT OF “CORRER EL GALLO” AND THE ENGLISH PASTIME OF “THROWING AT ‘SHROVE-COCKS.’”
The Spaniards brought with them to the New World a cruel form of sport, which consisted in burying a cock or hen in the earth up to its neck, and then allowing the young men of the village to mount their horses, and charging down at full speed upon the hapless bird, reach down from their saddles and endeavor to seize it and wring its neck. This sport (as seen by the author in the Indian Pueblo of Santo Domingo, New Mexico, in 1881, and described by him in “The Snake Dance of the Moquis”) is evidently a distorted form of the sacrifice of the chicken deity, which is to be discovered in many parts of Europe, always under the guise of brutal sport.
In England there was a modification. A goose was hung up by the feet, and then the villagers ran and attempted to seize its head, which was finally pulled off. There was still another of the same series in which a cat was put in a barrel, and the barrel was then beaten to pieces.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 40, article “Sorcery.”)
There was another English pastime, “Throwing at Shrove-Cocks,” much of the same nature.—(See idem, vol. i. p. 101, article “Ash-Wednesday,” and p. 72, article “Shrove-Tuesday.”)
Grimm describes the “heathen custom of tying cocks to the tops of holy-trees,” which prevailed very generally over Europe in Pagan times. “The Wends erected cross-trees, but still secretly heathen at heart, they contrived to fix at the very top of the poles a weather-cock.”—(Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” London, vol. ii. p. 672.)
“In parts of Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy, the reapers place a live cock in the corn which is to be cut last, and chase it over the field, or bury it up to the neck in the ground; afterwards they strike off its neck with a sickle or a scythe.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 9. He gives still other examples from Westphalia, Transylvania, etc.)
See also Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811, article “Goose Riding,” in which it is stated that this game was practised “in Derbyshire within the memory of persons now living.”