but adds, that "syttynge pastymes are seldom found good, especially in the day-time;" he therefore advises the pursuit of those that afforded both air and exercise. [965] In another part of his poem he speaks in strong terms against the practice of card-playing, as productive of idleness, especially when it is followed by the labouring people, in places of common resort:
Att ale howse too sit, at mack or at mall,
Tables or dyce, or that cardis men call,
Or what oother game owte of season dwe,
Let them be punysched without all rescue. [966]
Forrest's manuscript is in the Royal Library, [967] and at the commencement of the poem he is represented presenting it to king Edward VI. The author of an old morality, entitled Hycke Scorner, [968] written probably some time before this poem by Forrest, has placed the card-players with such company as evinces he had not a good opinion of their morals:
Walkers by nyght, with gret murderers,
Overthwarte with gyle, and joly carders.
And also in Barclay's translation of the Ship of Fooles, by Sebastian Brant, printed by Pynson in 1508, are these lines: