Some years ago a curious case was tried, exemplifying the mode of procedure. A Frenchman, M. Panchaud, was at Ascot Races, and he there saw the defendant and several other 'gentlemen' betting away, and apparently winning 'lots of sovereigns,' at one of these same thimble-rigs. 'Try your luck, gentlemen,' cried the operator; 'I'll bet any gentleman anything, from half-a-crown to five sovereigns, that he doesn't name the thimble as covers the corn!' M. Panchaud betted half-a-crown—won it; betted a sovereign—won it; betted a second sovereign—LOST it. 'Try your luck, gentlemen!' cried the operator again, shifting his thimbles and pepper-corn about the board, here and there and everywhere in a moment; and this done, he offered M. Panchaud a bet of five sovereigns that he could not 'name the thimble what covered the corn.' 'Bet him! Bet him! Why don't you bet him?' said the defendant (a landlord), nudging M. Panchaud on the elbow; and M. Panchaud, convinced in his 'own breast' that he knew the right thimble, said—'I shall betta you five sovereign if you will not touch de timbles again till I name.' 'Done!' cried the operator; and M. Panchaud was DONE—for, laying down his L10 note, it was caught up by SOMEBODY, the board was upset, the operator and his friends vanished 'like a flash of lightning,' and M. Panchaud was left full of amazement, but with empty pockets, with the defendant standing by his side. 'They are a set of rascals!' said the defendant; 'but don't fret, my fine fellow! I'll take you to somebody that shall soon get your money again; and so saying he led him off in a direction thus described in court by the fleeced Frenchman.—'You tooke me the WRONG way! The thieves ran one way, and you took me the other, you know, ahah! You know what you are about—you took me the WRONG WAY—ahah!'
CHAPTER XI. COCK-FIGHTING.
Cock-fighting is a practice of high antiquity, like many other detestable and abominable things that still cling to our social fabric. It was much in vogue in Greece and the adjacent isles. There was an annual festival at Athens called 'The Cock-fighting,' instituted by Themistocles at the end of the Persian war, under the following circumstances. When Themistocles was leading his army against the Persians, he saw some cocks fighting; he halted his troops, looked on, and said:—'These animals fight neither for the gods of their country, nor for the monuments of their ancestors, nor for glory, nor for freedom, nor for their children, but for the sake of victory, and in order that one may not yield to the other;' and from this topic he inspirited the Athenians. After his victorious return, as an act of gratitude for this accidental occasion of inspiring his troops with courage, he instituted the above festival, 'in order that what was an incitement to valour at that time might be perpetuated as an encouragement to the like bravery hereafter.' One cannot help smiling at these naive stories of the ancients to account for their mightiest results. Only think of any modern warrior halting his troops to make use of a cock-fight for the purpose of inspiriting them to victory!
On one occasion during the Peninsular war, when an important point was to be carried by assault, the officers were required to say something encouraging to their men, in order to brace them up for the encounter; but whilst the majority of the former recalled the remembrance of previous victories, an Irish captain contented himself with exclaiming—'Now, my lads, you see those fellows up there. Well, if you don't kill THEM, SHURE they'll kill YOU. That's all!' Struck with the comic originality of this address, the men rushed forward with a laugh and a shout, carrying all before them.
Among the ancient Greeks the cock was sacred to Apollo, Mercury, and aesculapius, on account of his vigilance, inferred from his early rising—the natural consequence of his 'early to bed'—and also to Mars, on account of his magnanimous and daring spirit.
It seems, then, that at first cock-fighting was partly a religious, and partly a political, institution at Athens; and was there continued—according to the above legend—for the purpose of cherishing the seeds of valour in the minds of youth; but that it was afterwards abused and perverted, both there and in other parts of Greece, by being made a common pastime, and applied to the purpose of gambling just as it was (and is still secretly) practised in England. An Attic law ran as follows—'Let cocks fight publicly in the theatre one day in the year.'(69)
(69) Pegge, in Archoeologia, quoting aelian, Columella, &c.
As to cock-fighting at Rome, Pegge, in the same work, gives his opinion, that it was not customary there till very late; but that quails were more pitted against each other for gambling purposes than cocks. This opinion seems confirmed by the thankfulness expressed by the good Antoninus—'that he had imbibed such dispositions from his preceptor, as had prevented him from breeding quails for the fight.'
'One cannot but regret,' wrote Pegge in 1775, 'that a creature so useful and so noble as the cock should be so enormously abused by us. It is true the massacre of Shrove Tuesday seems in a declining way, and in a few years, it is to be hoped, will be totally disused; but the cock-pit still continues a reproach to the humanity of Englishmen. It is unknown to me when the pitched battle first entered England; but it was probably brought hither by the Romans. The bird was here before Caesar's arrival; but no notice of his fighting has occurred to me earlier than the time of William Fitz-Stephen, who wrote the Life of Archbishop Becket, some time in the reign of Henry II. William describes the cocking as the sport of school-boys on Shrove Tuesday. "Every year, on the day which is called Carnelevaria (Carnival)—to begin with the sports of the London boys,—for we have all been boys—all the boys are wont to carry to their schoolmaster their fighting-cocks, and the whole of the forenoon is made a holiday for the boys to see the fights of their cocks in their schoolrooms." The theatre, it seems, was their school, and the master was the controller and director of the sport. From this time at least the diversion, however absurd, and even impious, was continued among us.'