‘Of wrastlynge was ther noon his peer,
Ther any ram shal stonde.’
Strutt, 82, figures a wrestling from Royal MS. 2, B. viii, with a cock set on a pole as the prize.
[489] Cf. Appendix I., and Frazer, ii. 316; Jevons, Plutarch, lxix. 143, on the struggle between two wards—the Sacred Way and the Subura—for the head of the October Horse at Rome.
[490] Haddon, 270. The tug-of-war reappears in Korea and Japan as a ceremony intended to secure a good harvest.
[491] Mrs. Gomme, s. vv. Bandyball, Camp, Football, Hockey, Hood, Hurling, Shinty. These games, in which the ball is fought for, are distinct from those already mentioned as having a ceremonial use, in which it is amicably tossed from player to player (cf. p. 128). If Golf belongs to the present category, it is a case in which the endeavour seems to be actually to bury the ball. It is tempting to compare the name Hockey with the Hock-cart of the harvest festival, and with Hock-tide; but it does not really seem to be anything but Hookey. The original of both the hockey-stick and the golf-club was probably the shepherd’s crook. Mr. Pepys tried to cast stones with a shepherd’s crook on those very Epsom downs where the stockbroker now foozles his tee shot.
[492] F. L. vii. 345; M. Shearman, Athletics and Football, 246; Haddon, 271; Gomme, Vill. Comm. 240; Ditchfield, 57, 64; W. Fitzstephen, Vita S. Thomae (†1170-82) in Mat. for Hist. of Becket (R. S.), iii. 9, speaks of the ‘lusum pilae celebrem’ in London ‘die quae dicitur Carnilevaria.’ Riley, 571, has a London proclamation of 1409 forbidding the levy of money for ‘foteballe’ and cok-thresshyng.’ At Chester the annual Shrove Tuesday football on the Roodee was commuted for races in 1540 (Hist. MSS. viii. 1. 362). At Dublin there was, in 1569, a Shrove Tuesday ‘riding’ of the ‘occupacions’ each ‘bearing balles’ (Gilbert, ii. 54).
[493] Haddon, loc. cit.; Gomme, loc. cit.; Gloucester F. L. 38. Cf. the conflictus described in ch. ix, and the classical parallels in Frazer, Pausanias, iii. 267.
[494] F. L. iii. 441; Ditchfield, 85.
[495] F. L. vii. 330 (a very full account); viii. 72, 173; Ditchfield, 50. There is a local aetiological myth about a lady who lost her hood on a windy day, and instituted the contest in memory of the event.